"He critiqued the reviewers, saying,

Two of 55 reviews were adequate, the others were amateurish and incompetent, failing to recognize the greatness of the book, failing to convey to the reader what the book is like, what its essential qualities are, counterfeiting this with stereotyped preconceptions — the standard cliches about a book that is "ambitious," "erudite", "long," "negative," etc., counterfeiting competence with inhuman jargon.Gaddis appeared to take critics to task in the novel itself.