Who is familiar with the novels of Gaddis knows the reach of his intelligence, of his lucidity; a sagacity and a capacity for penetration that the reader will also find here in all its magnificence. Take as an example the text that gives title to the book, where it throws its darts at the culture of the success of its country, to that union between the Protestant ethic and capitalism that gives rise to the idea as perverse as false that who is poor is it because he deserves it and that the most favored are also the most virtuous. The writer, literature, would also fall on the side of the losers, the relegated, the laggards in the implacable and blind career of progress to nowhere, but from that marginal position may point out the failures and miseries of an abject and unjust system .