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davidgillette's review
4.0
So this book is about the metaphysics and epistemology of reading and writing, especially fiction, built around gossipy made-up (?) stories about the New York art/literary scene in the sixties. (If you want to know what a high-rent gossip site like Gawker would have been like [don't think about it too hard, you'll break my glib simile] in Manhattan in 1969, read this book.) Sorrentino constantly has his narrator emphasize that he is making the characters up, but then he also acts like he knows them, or like they have an existence off the page. It's trolling, basically. Caring and not-caring are deployed in such a way that the reader is kept deliberately off-balance. It's very well-done: intentionally plain writing, the only real sizzle coming from the sick burns ("If things fall right, you'll be accepted after a few years, and take your place among that great body of useless grinds who won't for a minute stop expressing themselves" is an early and memorable one) and the tapestry of allusion.
The interrogation of what a "character" is, exactly, in fiction, is very interesting to me. At one point he finds Bart Kahane's wife insufficiently well-developed, so he says, "Let's say that Bart's wife is Lolita. I mean, she is the exact Lolita that Nabokov stitched together." So this book is also Nabokov fanfic, too, which is great. To what extent can we say that the entity we've encountered before in Lolita is replicated here? She's all grown up, her past (sort of) behind her, and there isn't much to connect her, actually, to the eponymous character of the twentieth century's most famous dirty book. Sorrentino constantly emphasizes that the characteristics of his characters are largely a matter of narratorial whim, something I've often found confounding about the way "character" is presented in so many theories of fiction, not to mention the approach to writing so prevalent in internet fanfic and roleplay circles (where the "cast" is a phantasmal given, a bunch of nonpersons for whom lines and actions must be written). The infinite mutability of fictional characters, the extent to which anything that can be said about them can (or could) instantly be changed or denied, legitimately, by interpretation as much as by editorial fiat, has always made the notion of "consistent" or "well-rounded" characterization seem, frankly, chimeric—too poorly formulated to really register. But many people seem to disagree, in part because we learn to imagine ourselves and real people around us through fiction, and this approach (that "personality" is consistent, discrete, and capable of articulation, however oblique) seems to lie at the foundation of our notions of social reality.
Sorrentino is attacking that. He is also attacking: political commitment, art with a social purpose, notions of social responsibility, adultery, monogamy, non-exclusive relationships, poseurs, entertainment, mass culture, the blurring of the line between "high" and "low" art, the counterculture, and the notion of self-possession and self-realization. Most of his barbs find the mark for me. He's so delightfully mean! I think he takes some of his art-for-art's-sake stuff seriously, which is fine (or at least I refuse to take a stand here on the Purpose of Artistic Endeavor), but it stands out amid the wreckage left by his mockery. This book was ahead of its time: it's a bit like South Park, careless, funny, ironic, sort of reactionary (mostly cheerfully so). Some bullshit from the narrator, and Sorrentino doesn't subject that voice to the same cynicism everybody else faces, which comes off a bit unequal. Why not do a version of this book with multiple narratorial voices, just to make things REALLY insane?
Pretty good, overall, though. And I very much appreciate that somebody else has a problem with the idea of the "character."
EDITED TO ADD: Just by the by—for all that people complain about Brooklyn today, this book and others I've read about the period seem to indicate that Peak Asshole was reached in New York arts culture sometime in the sixties.
The interrogation of what a "character" is, exactly, in fiction, is very interesting to me. At one point he finds Bart Kahane's wife insufficiently well-developed, so he says, "Let's say that Bart's wife is Lolita. I mean, she is the exact Lolita that Nabokov stitched together." So this book is also Nabokov fanfic, too, which is great. To what extent can we say that the entity we've encountered before in Lolita is replicated here? She's all grown up, her past (sort of) behind her, and there isn't much to connect her, actually, to the eponymous character of the twentieth century's most famous dirty book. Sorrentino constantly emphasizes that the characteristics of his characters are largely a matter of narratorial whim, something I've often found confounding about the way "character" is presented in so many theories of fiction, not to mention the approach to writing so prevalent in internet fanfic and roleplay circles (where the "cast" is a phantasmal given, a bunch of nonpersons for whom lines and actions must be written). The infinite mutability of fictional characters, the extent to which anything that can be said about them can (or could) instantly be changed or denied, legitimately, by interpretation as much as by editorial fiat, has always made the notion of "consistent" or "well-rounded" characterization seem, frankly, chimeric—too poorly formulated to really register. But many people seem to disagree, in part because we learn to imagine ourselves and real people around us through fiction, and this approach (that "personality" is consistent, discrete, and capable of articulation, however oblique) seems to lie at the foundation of our notions of social reality.
Sorrentino is attacking that. He is also attacking: political commitment, art with a social purpose, notions of social responsibility, adultery, monogamy, non-exclusive relationships, poseurs, entertainment, mass culture, the blurring of the line between "high" and "low" art, the counterculture, and the notion of self-possession and self-realization. Most of his barbs find the mark for me. He's so delightfully mean! I think he takes some of his art-for-art's-sake stuff seriously, which is fine (or at least I refuse to take a stand here on the Purpose of Artistic Endeavor), but it stands out amid the wreckage left by his mockery. This book was ahead of its time: it's a bit like South Park, careless, funny, ironic, sort of reactionary (mostly cheerfully so). Some bullshit from the narrator, and Sorrentino doesn't subject that voice to the same cynicism everybody else faces, which comes off a bit unequal. Why not do a version of this book with multiple narratorial voices, just to make things REALLY insane?
Pretty good, overall, though. And I very much appreciate that somebody else has a problem with the idea of the "character."
EDITED TO ADD: Just by the by—for all that people complain about Brooklyn today, this book and others I've read about the period seem to indicate that Peak Asshole was reached in New York arts culture sometime in the sixties.
khaaaaanor's review against another edition
dark
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
seanwatson's review
so great. insanely dark, funny, and bitter, but despite the metafiction stuff it's closer to céline than any of the postmodernists. sorrentino's rage comes from a place of despair, but there's no aimless irony – he believes that the world just isn't as good as it could be or should be, and finds the possibility of renewal in destroying everything in his path.
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