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chillcox15's review against another edition
5.0
A bit more programmatic than its Irish forebears, but Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew is still a remarkable celebration and indictment of the poshlost clichéd possibilities of language. I took long breaks from it, and it drove me a bit mad, but isn't that what it is supposed to do?
professorpi's review against another edition
i tried so hard. but i got so sick of the pages of word salad. i kept coming back, thinking surely it will end! it did not. every time sorrentino drops a page of rhyming phrases straight out of r/showerthoughts i want to die. sometimes it was funny. but pages of miserable unfunny references i barely got were such a chore and i could not take it anymore. that play was the last straw. i am done. no more.
its not terrible. like it is better than a lot of other books. but it turns to this slop of language i just could not wade through.
edit: everyone else is saying it drags in the middle. this is true. i simply do not have the willpower to get through the middle. author absolutely loses track of the characters and proceeds to just ramble. for pages.
its not terrible. like it is better than a lot of other books. but it turns to this slop of language i just could not wade through.
edit: everyone else is saying it drags in the middle. this is true. i simply do not have the willpower to get through the middle. author absolutely loses track of the characters and proceeds to just ramble. for pages.
sippingdarjeerling's review against another edition
Its too difficult of a read right now but I will probably come back to it.
george_salis's review against another edition
"'The idea of a novel about a writer writing a novel is truly old hat. Nothing further can be done with the genre, a genre that was exhausted at its moment of conception.'
And yet Mulligan Stew is such a novel, the alpha-omega of the genre as far as I can tell. However, it doesn’t simply or complexly exist on a Mobius strip. We mustn’t forget the cosmic sea of stories it sprang from. In the same way that two scientists can independently discover a mathematical proof or scientific theory, for instance, Italo Calvino and Gilbert Sorrentino—our Darwin and Wallace—both wrote postmodern novels exemplary of the second half of the 20th century. That is, constructed in a deconstructed and hyper-conscious way, polyphonic, critical of reading, of writing, &c. Indeed, If on a winter’s night a traveler was published in the same year yet not Englished until a couple of years later. The latter is a novel about a reader reading a novel while this one is a novel about a writer writing a novel, mirrors held up to mirrors. Calvino was always concerned with symmetry, mathematical precision even (just look at the matrix he constructed for Invisible Cities), while Sorrentino’s Stew is purposefully superfluous despite the fairly clear structure, chunky in its broth, you could say. There’s plenty of fun to be had here as Sorrentino includes everything and the kitchen sink, as well as the chick’n shrink, the hitchin’ slink, the stitchin’ kink, the sickened think, the quicken blink, the witch’s drink, and the bitchin’ Sphinx, just the way I like my Stew."
Read my full review for free here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/10/20/mulligan-stew-by-gilbert-sorrentino/
And yet Mulligan Stew is such a novel, the alpha-omega of the genre as far as I can tell. However, it doesn’t simply or complexly exist on a Mobius strip. We mustn’t forget the cosmic sea of stories it sprang from. In the same way that two scientists can independently discover a mathematical proof or scientific theory, for instance, Italo Calvino and Gilbert Sorrentino—our Darwin and Wallace—both wrote postmodern novels exemplary of the second half of the 20th century. That is, constructed in a deconstructed and hyper-conscious way, polyphonic, critical of reading, of writing, &c. Indeed, If on a winter’s night a traveler was published in the same year yet not Englished until a couple of years later. The latter is a novel about a reader reading a novel while this one is a novel about a writer writing a novel, mirrors held up to mirrors. Calvino was always concerned with symmetry, mathematical precision even (just look at the matrix he constructed for Invisible Cities), while Sorrentino’s Stew is purposefully superfluous despite the fairly clear structure, chunky in its broth, you could say. There’s plenty of fun to be had here as Sorrentino includes everything and the kitchen sink, as well as the chick’n shrink, the hitchin’ slink, the stitchin’ kink, the sickened think, the quicken blink, the witch’s drink, and the bitchin’ Sphinx, just the way I like my Stew."
Read my full review for free here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/10/20/mulligan-stew-by-gilbert-sorrentino/
hyaenidae's review against another edition
3.0
This must have been the most eccentric book, that I ever laid eyes on. It is probably the most meta a metafiction book can get, even so, that Sorrentino went length to keep up the world he imagined - lyrically even going so far, that when telling the story about a bad writer, that chapters that are enclosed are actually badly written. It on one hand is an accolade to stick to the fiction, yet it boils down to the book being a very strenuous read for the more casual reader.
To sum it up: the writing style, the width and plethora of lyrical imaginations is amazing, the multiple meta-layers and the fun he has with it, is impressive, but the novel sometimes loses its steam in the middle part of the book and sometimes feels like Sorrentino was showing off whilst losing track of his protagonists.
To sum it up: the writing style, the width and plethora of lyrical imaginations is amazing, the multiple meta-layers and the fun he has with it, is impressive, but the novel sometimes loses its steam in the middle part of the book and sometimes feels like Sorrentino was showing off whilst losing track of his protagonists.
geoffwehmeyer's review against another edition
4.0
A terrific farce, Sorrentino parodies just about every literary trope and trend. Found myself disinterested at times, but the high points made up for any tedium elsewhere.
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