3-stars? i dunno. maybe 4. this isn't an easy read, not your typical he said she said. maybe that is the point...like, you have this character, bast, working on some music, writing music for all these instruments. and in the story, you have all these characters talking at, over, to...seldom? with? each other.

like, you have these one-sided phone conversations, you're reading along, trying to figure out just what in the hail is going on...financial talk, all these go-getters, jet-setters....and then you have these other parts where j r....ha ha ha! this kid, is like doing the same thing....only what you get from him is him explaining stuff to bast, who he claims to be helping out.

from page one, the whole thing is dialogue. no quotation marks. the story isn't set up that way. very little in the way of scene setting--you get some of that from the dialogue and there's some funny situations, like this piece of string dangling down outside the window of this apartment where the water is running, like, all the time in the sink...and then there's this rhoda girl, ha ha ha ha! where was i? yeah, the string, someone from an apartment above, trying to catch this quarter that may or may not be glued to the outside of the windowsill...

if the financial dealings are compared to a symphony, the result is nothing but noise, a discordant cacophony of noise. all these cross-purposes, doing one thing to obtain not the thing, but something else associated with the thing, a tax write-off or something.

perhaps this one would have been better read w/some sort of "cheat-sheet" of characters. you know the cast of characters in a play, prior, no? seems like doing that would have been a safe bet, made the read more enjoyable, as time being what it is, though a second reading would likely provide more of the entertainment factor and then some, dunno if i want to read this a second time, though i will pick up some other gaddis stuff and see what gives.

the other thing about this....story...is how time is treated. that, and transitions from one "scene" to another. might be a time when you realize two characters have gone to beddy-bye....and the next sentence, the sun is coming up a new day....don't blink. since it is all dialogue, dialogue that begins each utterance with a hyphen...call it experimental? what?...like celine with his...?

the way the story begins, these two old ladies getting the scoop from someone who visits trying to explain something, and they sound like something out of flannery o'connor, this guy who visits, obviously frustrated...and you do get the idea the two aunts are listening....and that's a point, too, hey? listening? bast is a good listener. but the way the story starts out, man, the ole blood pressure was rising in commiseration w/the guy who visits, trying to give them the scoop...but they're like talking at cross-purposes...some of it is a real hoot.

there's some nice touches, seems like, say like w/what j r, the fourth grader is doing, and then seeing the results of that in the dialogue of others. at one point in the story, too, j r tells bast that he should have plugged into banking....that's where the real bucks are at...and by all accounts, i suspect j r has indeed plugged in as things are really rolling, no?

so i dunno, maybe 4 stars