| The
Moon in Its Flight
Reviews
Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Award Finalist
San Francisco Chronicle Best of the Year
The New York Times Book Review :
"A perfectly evoked mid-20th century New York."
San Francisco Chronicle :
"The best stories here force us to consider and reconsider how we approach the very act of reading. Amid the characters' anxieties, a kind of narrative playfulness shines through; the narrators frequently butt in to comment on the stories they tell. In bringing down the walls that typically fortify a narrator from his audience, in exposing the artifice behind the art, Sorrentino requires us to extend that healthy distrust not only to what we read but also to the narratives shaping the world around us."
Seattle Times :
"[Sorrentino] drives the machinery of his stories like a fancy new coupe whose engine he perfectly understands."
Review of Contemporary Fiction :
"The title piece of this collection is among the ten best stories in the history of American literature; it's availability in book form—along with the other nineteen collected stories—is long overdue."
Books in Canada :
"What is present throughout is Sorrentino's delight in replacing the usual contrivances of stories and novels with other contrivances . . . Instead of an old and creaking artificial environment to read within, he offers the equivalent to contemporary architecture where beams and struts are exposed."
Minneapolis Star Tribune:
"The highest pleasure of reading Sorrentino is found in his individual sentences, which are so delightful they could be enjoyed plucked randomly from the pages. Dense, urban, with a sublimely snarky rhythm, interrupted constantly with quick and quirky asides, they hold us in gleeful attention . . . The Moon in Its Flight is a thrilling retrospective of (and, for those uninitiated, a wonderful introduction to) Sorrentino's uniquely brilliant body of work."
Rain Taxi Review of Books :
"[The Moon in Its Flight] is the kind of book that gives hope to those disillusioned by the state of contemporary American letters."
American Book Review :
"In this collection [Sorrentino] shows how he can deal with shoptalk like Stanley Elkin and combine sentences from different sources as smoothly as Walter Abish . . . Like Samuel Beckett, he feels he can't go on, but goes on. 'I've never had the courage,' the narrator of his last story admits, 'to act on my belief that the world, beyond all its endlessly rehearsed wonders and beauties, is absolute shit, that life is best when ignored, or somehow turned away from, and that nothing should be taken at face value. In sum, that everything is a pathetic bust.' Thankfully, neither has Sorrentino. But there's great dark comedy in coming close."
Minneapolis Observer :
"[Sorrentino]'s at his most insightful when he levels his vitriol at the hippie dilettantes who orbited the art world of the fifties and sixties, something he does rather often; a better, or more devastating, sketch of a generation you couldn't find."
New Pages :
"Sorrentino has an acute social awareness, which lends itself well to satire . . . He consistently offers clever narratives of dramas and absurdities."
English Studies Forum :
"Accomplished short fictions . . . Generously Sorrentino recreates post-war America with immediacy—and often scathing (and howlingly funny) insight."
Publishers Weekly :
"Underneath Sorrentino's cynical tone and avant-garde stylings, his themes—art corrupted by ambition and commerce, youthful desire corrupted by marriage—reveal him to be a romantic at heart."
Library Journal :
"Two hallmarks of this collection by longtime experimentalist Sorrentino are the author's conversational tone and the constant awareness that one is reading Sorrentino . . . Readers who haven't tried Sorrentino before would do well to start with this varied volume."
Booklist :
"Possessing both the grace of James Joyce and the snap and crackle of Tom Wolfe, this insightful offering by the two-time PEN/Faulkner Award finalist is a must-read for those who fancy fiction served on wry."
Jennifer Gay, BookPeople:
"Gilbert Sorrentino is one of the neglected masters of American fiction. This collection of short stories, gathered from over the course of the last 35 years, is an excellent opportunity to make his acquaintance. There's a lot to admire: stinging observations, a self-aware, conversational tone, beautifully crafted sentences. If you're tired of what Sorrentino considers phony, self-satisfied 'fine writing,' this is the writer for you."
Joe DeSalvo, Faulkner House Books:
"I found the stories by turns funny, dark, caustic, and illuminating, representative of the writer's extraordinary range."
Walter
Abish:
"Gilbert
Sorrentino's brilliantly inventive, wickedly funny stories impart a truth
that has the power of divination. Reading The Moon in Its Flight is
sheer pleasure."
Robert Coover:
"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. From the anecdotal to the Oulipian, through a wide range of voices, each of these masterful tales is an immediate sensuous and intellectual delight."
Harry Mathews:
"This exhilarating book has been long due, and certainly worth waiting for: one of our native geniuses here delivers all his nifty goods in the particularly accessible form of short stories. He is of course mad and modern and full of surprises; but perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that he emerges as a supreme realist. For a compelling, hilarious, and ultimately compassionate rendering of life in mid-20th-century America, forget the conscientious subjectors and take Gilbert Sorrentino at his golden Word."
Carter Scholz:
"Gilbert Sorrentino is a master. His ear is flawless, his eye deadly, his insight acute. In the stringency of their art, these stories convey more genuine sympathy for sad, suffering, vile, deluded humanity than all the slovenly wheeze that is generally mistaken for 'fine writing.' And when they're not breaking your heart, they're very, very funny."
Also
available by this author:
|
