Lunar Follies
Reviews

Harper's:
"Hilarious . . . vintage Sorrentino, with the sonar ear and wicked wink."

New York Times Book Review:
"Like a reckless heir to Borges, Barthelme and Groucho Marx, Gilbert Sorrentino co-opts the language of critical discourse to subvert his audience's preconceptions . . . this dizzying, very funny book . . . takes on an almost poetic cohesion, linked by its bawdy tone, its dissident themes and its implied preference for direct experience over sterile summary."

Times Literary Supplement:
"Lunar Follies is a comic distillation of some of [Sorrentino's] favoured procedures and preoccupations. It is literally a catalogue: each chapter, named after a landmark of the moon and arranged alphabetically, describes an installation or artefact in an imaginary art exhibition. . . . The pleasure of reading Sorrentino's work lies in the effects he creates from employing, questioning and extending different structural forms."

Washington Post:
"The satire of Lunar Follies hews so close to the bone that it saws right through it . . . Sorrentino's savagery can be Swiftian, usually exaggerating by just the slightest degree the debased language of the cultural marketplace. . . .  Exhilarating."

Village Voice:
"Lunar Follies is yet another wily variation on the weaving of narrative betwixt itself: a slim collection of fictional art reviews of nonexistent art installations . . . Sorrentino's skewer of all things postmodern is of course a grandly postmodern piece itself."

The Believer :
"A bravura feat of parody."

Review of Contemporary Fiction:
"One would have to look back to Pope to find Sorrentino's equal as far as making poetry out of the ‘wooden language' of critical discourse . . . While the satire in Lunar Follies is the easiest element to engage, what's most affecting about the book are the views it gives of an arid but magical world, unique to Sorrentino."

Westchester Journal News :
"I can't think of another American author as consistently incendiary. Sorrentino is simply incapable of writing a bad or even slight book. . . . His blistering humor makes Lunar Follies the single richest send-up of the art world since The Recognitions, as if the poseurs and sad sacks in the background of William Gaddis's masterpiece found work as freelance art critics and curators."

Michael Silverblatt, KCRW's "Bookworm":
"In Lunar Follies, one of his genre-defying extravaganzas, Sorrentino describes outlandish art shows, all of them taking place in galleries named for mountain ranges and craters of the moon. While discussing the poetry and pretension of art and art talk, the sensibility of Sorrentino, the master satirist, is revealed."

Time Out New York:
"Gilbert Sorrentino's Lunar Follies resembles the riffs one might scribble in a notebook while strolling through Chelsea galleries with one eyebrow cocked. What differentiates it from a run-of-the-mill art-lover's diary is Sorrentino's expert ventriloquism. He's witty and precise in his mimicry of the nonsense that pads gallery catalogs and graduate theses."

Rain Taxi Review of Books:
"The language of Lunar Follies shames and terrorizes the fakery of its artist and writer characters to devastating comic effect, and out of the wreckage is born a true work of art."

Minneapolis City Pages:
"Big props go out to Gilbert Sorrentino, author of the new literary object Lunar Follies, for . . . this slender literary piece of monkeyshine."

Minneapolis Observer:
"You may be surprised by how funny Sorrentino's ‘reviews' are, even if underground, under-noticed art isn't your thing. . . . He is viciously, deliciously funny."

New York Sun:
"Mr. Sorrentino's sarcasm has legs . . . No matter how bad Mr. Sorrentino makes the critic seem, the nonexistent art described shines through with some interest."

Library Journal (starred review):
"Can a two-page list of paintings and artists rejected by a gallery, for instance, really be considered literary fiction? Yes, hilariously so. . . . Savor this book, which is highly recommended."

Publishers Weekly :
"Readers skeptical of (but intrigued by) conceptual and installation art will enjoy this clever parodic take on the contemporary art world. In fake reviews, lists of found objects, profiles, photo captions and catalogue copy Sorrentino satirizes the esoteric works found on the cultural cutting edge. . . . Beneath his loving, blustery banter, Sorrentino clearly values the rights of artists to push the limits of audience expectation."

Booklist :
"In Lunar Follies, [Sorrentino] aims his satirical wit, acrobatic linguistics, and critical acumen at the art world to hilarious effect."

Joe DeSalvo, Faulkner House Books:
"I am astounded and delighted with Sorrentino's unique mix of biting wit, lucid prose and dizzying imagination. I look forward to recommending this to my customers."

Jeffrey Eugenides:
"If it were possible, after reading a book as excoriatingly funny and purifying as Lunar Follies, to engage once again in the blurb business; if I didn't feel, as I always do after reading the great Gilbert Sorrentino, unsure of my every word, I might say this to you: Lunar Follies is an hilarious, playful, and protean book, resplendent with the qualities that have made Sorrentino 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."

Also available by this author:

• The Abyss of Human Illusion
• A Strange Commonplace
• Little Casino
• The Moon in Its Flight