SOURCE: "Courting Lawyers and Whores," in The Hungry Mind Review, No. 29, Spring, 1994, pp. 34, 42-3.

[In the excerpt below, Amdahl offers praise for A Frolic of His Own.]

Adventure! How may one avail oneself of it in a culture gone mad with comfort and dreams of safety? I think there are two broad avenues radiating from the modern American self toward the perpetually fluorescent horizon of modern American adventure: one is law and the other is medicine. White-water rafting, mountaineering, alligator wrestling—certainly these activities are exciting and put one at risk, but they seem hobbylike compared to the harrowing, soul-chilling thrills of engaging in multiple lawsuits, or of contracting a fatal, high-profile disease and being at the mercy of the dark gods of insurance and technology. American adventures are adventures of money.

Two extraordinary novels, A Frolic of His Own, by William Gaddis, and Butterfly Stories, by William...