Watch your corn sales, price of hogs a hundred pounds goes over eleven times corn a bushel they'll feed the corn to the hogs, goes under eleven hell with the hogs sell the corn . . . Taken at random from this alternatively brilliant and exasperating work. Beginning where the Recognitions left off, Gaddis stuffs 725 chapterless pages with endless dialogue, myriad characters, financial transactions, radio broadcasts, obscure historical references, pop-culture riffs, etc., making this one of the baggiest of loose baggy monsters. JR is an eleven year-old boy with a knack for turning penny-stock purchases into million-dollar holdings. Edward Bast is a music teacher at JR's school who agrees to help him navigate the shadow world of board rooms, bankers, and PR men that JR's growing family of companies soon comes to confront. Add to this mix a demented school board, a loquacious drunk, an enterprising governor, and several lawyers and the stage is set for all manner of satire, farce, and the occasional hint of sadness. Hard to keep up with, hard to read, but with enough great scenes to make it all worthwhile.