About the Author:
A luminary of American literature, Gilbert Sorrentino (1929-2006) was a boyhood friend of Hubert Selby, Jr. and a confidant of William Carlos Williams. He is the author of the classic novels Mulligan Stew and Little Casino and over thirty other books, including A Strange Commonplace, Lunar Follies, The Moon in Its Flight, and The Abyss of Human Illusion. A former editor at Grove Press, Sorrentino taught at Stanford University for many years before returning to his native Brooklyn.
Praise
“Gilbert Sorrentino has long been one of our most intelligent and daring writers. But he is also one of our funniest writers, given to Joycean flights of wordplay, punning, list-making, vulgarity and relentless self-commentary.” —The New York Times
“For decades, Gilbert Sorrentino has remained a unique figure in our literature. He reminds us that fiction lives because artists make it. . . .To the novel—everyone’s novel—Sorrentino brings honor, tradition and relentless passion.” —Don Delillo
“Sorrentino [is] a writer like no other. He’s learned, companionable, ribald, brave, mathematical, at once virtuosic and somehow without ego. Sorrentino’s books break free of the routine that inevitably accompanies traditional narrative, no matter how clever and intelligent, and through a passionate renunciation shine with an unforgiving, but for all that, cleansing, light.” —Jeffrey Eugenides
“Gilbert Sorrentino has all the wit and charm of the great raconteur. His affection for the music of language is as fresh and appealing as that of a kid in love.” —Robert Coover
“Of the elder generation of postmodernists, only Thomas Pynchon and Sorrentino remain truly dangerous.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Every new work of fiction for Mr. Sorrentino became an adventure in innovation.” —Washington Post
“One of [Brooklyn]’s most intriguing and authentic homegrown talents. Sorrentino’s Bay Ridge deserves to be appreciated alongside Malamud’s Crown Heights, Arthur Miller’s Coney Island, Henry Miller’s and Betty Smith’s Williamsburg Hamill’s and Auster’s Park Slope, and Lethem’s Boerum Hill.” —Bookforum
“[Sorrentino’s] novels have the kind of physical charge and excitement more often associated with jazz and improvisational comedy than with literature.” —Newsweek
“One never expects traditional plots from Sorrentino, but one can usually count on wit, vigorous prose, and an unflinchingly bleak take on life. . . . Despite the bleakness, Sorrentino regards his characters with tenderness.” —New Yorker
“Sorrentino demonstrates, with a steady flow of puns, parodies, misquotations (deliberate), incorrect historical references (ditto), and hideous verse (presumably also ditto), that the country abounds in foolishness.” —Atlantic Monthly
“Sorrentino is a bright, educated man— balancing difficult dialects against obscure notations, addressing readers and reviewers, boldly playing with form. At times his language approaches a Finnegan’s wakefulness.” —Los Angeles Times
“Sorrentino is simply incapable of writing a bad or even slightly book.” —Westchester Journal News
“Salute Gilbert Sorrentino! His is the spirit that keeps American fiction alive and kicking.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Sorrentino is an inventive, serio-comic writer with an enviable ability to draw desperate laughter out of events and obsessions of everyday life.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“A writer of constant invention, Gilbert Sorrentino was a maverick artist who . . . reinvented the idea of the novel.” —Brooklyn Rail
“What can take another novelist many pages to get across, Sorrentino, a true master, sets down in a few sentences. His books, with their ferocity, attention to detail, and imagination, are inspirational.” —Books in Canada
Books Available:
