Gilbert Sorrentino – författare

The author of Mulligan Stew presents “a savage, baffling and beguiling novel about the wreckage that infidelity leaves behind” (Kirkus Reviews). 

Borrowing its title from a William Carlos Williams poem, A Strange Commonplace lays bare the secrets and dreams of characters whose lives are intertwined by coincidence and necessity, possessions and experience. From the boozy 1950s to the culturally vacuous present, through the jungle of city streets and suburban bedroom communities, lines blur between families and acquaintances, violence and love, hope and despair. As fathers try to connect with their children, as writers struggle for credibility, as wives walk out, and an old man plays Russian roulette with a deck of cards, their stories resonate with poignancy and savage humor—familiar, tragic, and cathartic. 

 “One never expects traditional plots from Sorrentino . . . but one can usually count on wit, vigorous prose, and an unflinchingly bleak take on life. . . . The novel is divided into fifty-two discrete parts—a dazzlingly original deck of cards.” —The New Yorker 

 “[Sorrentino] can be cutting in his satire, and bullying in his eroticism, and now adds anger to the mix as he portrays a circle of struggling New Yorkers living back in the sexist, alcohol-sodden, and hypocritical 1950s on into the egomaniacal present.” —Booklist 

“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

“Sorrentino’s ear for dialects and metaphor is perfect: his creations, however brief their presence, are vivid, and much of his writing is very funny and clever, piled with allusions.”—The Washington Post Book World

Bearing his trademark balance between exquisitely detailed narration, ground-breaking form, and sharp insight into modern life, Gilbert Sorrentino’s first-ever collection of stories spans 35 years of his writing career and contains both new stories and those that expanded and transformed the landscape of American fiction when they first appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Harper’s, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories.

In these grimly comic, unsentimental tales, the always-memorable characters dive headlong into the wasteland of urban culture, seeking out banal perversions, confusing art with the art scene, mistaking lust for love, and letting petty aspirations get the best of them. This is a world where the American dream is embodied in the moonlit cocktail hour and innocence passes at a breakneck speed, swiftly becoming a nostalgia-ridden cliché. As Sorrentino says in the title story, “art cannot rescue anybody from anything,” but his stories do offer some salvation to each of us by locating hope, humor, and beauty amidst a prevailing wind of cynical despair.

Gilbert Sorrentino has published over 20 books of fiction and poetry, including the classic Mulligan Stew and his latest novel, Little Casino, which was shortlisted for the 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award. After two decades on the faculty at Stanford University, he recently returned to his native Brooklyn.

När Gilbert Sorrentinos debutroman från 1966, The Sky Changes, utkom på svenska nästan samtidigt med författarens död 2006, mottogs den med strålande kritik av en enad kritikerkår. Nu följer vi upp utgivningen med hans lika briljanta andra roman, Steelwork, från 1970. Gilbert Sorrentino har på sin vackert poetiska prosa ringat in en bit av Amerika i denna varma, r­oliga och intelligenta roman som detaljtroget återskapar atmos­fären och människorna i en nu svunnen tid.