Little Casino [Paperback]

Gilbert Sorrentino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

In this superb novel composed of fragments of memory, Gilbert Sorrentino captures the unconventional nuances of a conventional world. A masterful collage of events is evocatively chained together by secrets and hidden truths that are almost accidentally revealed. Each episode, affectingly textured with penetrating detail, ferrets out the gristle and unconventional beauty found in the voices of the working-class inhabitants from an irretrievable, golden age Brooklyn.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Often poetic in its digressive excursions into the minds of postwar Brooklyn denizens, this slender novel by Sorrentino (Mulligan Stew) zooms across time and geography on a dizzy journey of names, memories and tangents. The acclaimed poet and novelist stitches together disparate narratives, finding links between anonymous characters stepping into the story, whether for a page or several chapters. Deciphering the plot (or plots, as numerous story lines war with one another) proves nearly impossible and will frustrate some readers. The prose takes on a stream-of-consciousness quality that threatens to overwhelm with detours into sexual forays, short treatises on the origins of military slang expressions, hustling New York bookies and sundry other topics. Each of the novel's 52 chapters can stand as an individual (albeit fleeting) narrative, and when taken as such, the parts become more than the whole. By themselves, the chapters are easily digestible morsels of delicious prose self-contained stories that offer sometimes dreamy, sometimes gritty glimpses into ordinary lives. A sense of mischief reigns as the author leaps from character to character, locale to locale and year to year with reckless abandon. Sorrentino adds brief "commentary" at the end of each chapter often clever, frequently poignant, occasionally unintelligible. Mostly, though, his delivery is frank and relaxed, as if the reader were an old friend. Author tour. (May)Forecast: Sorrentino is well known to followers of innovative writing, and blurbs by Don DeLillo and David Markson should attract some mainstream browsers to this distinctive title.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

A luminary of American literature, Gilbert Sorrentino was a boyhood friend of Hubert Selby, Jr., a confidant of William Carlos Williams, a two-time PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, and the recipient of a Lannan Literary Lifetime Achievement Award. He taught at Stanford for many years before returning to his native Brooklyn and published over thirty books before his death in 2006.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566891264
• ISBN-13: 978-1566891264
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,645,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An accessible book by a difficult author, August 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Casino (Paperback)

Sorrentino had eluded me for almost a year. A writing teacher first introduced me to the author with, "The Moon in its Flight," and I fell in love with its metafiction (what with Sorrentino himself commenting on plotting and character development, challenging the reader to see the story for what it is--a story). I went on to try other stuff, but what I tried--"Gold Fools," whose every sentence is a question, and "Pack of Lies," a compendium of three early novellas interrelated, sort of, with recurring characters and circular storylines--left me frustrated.
"Little Casino," however, is different. An engaging, accessible, and finally wonderful book, it is similar to Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions," only not so cute. Sure, the plot/s is/are hard to comprehend, and some character portraits bleed into others, but the writing is full of wisdom and truthful observation regarding real-life human feelings--love, loathing, excitement, depression, despair. Read it and be glad you've found a way into the mind of a great writer.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little Casino, Big Writer, January 2, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Casino (Paperback)

Where has Gilbert Sorrentino been all my life? Why have I known about Peter Handke, David Markson, Barry Hannah, Curtis White, and Jeanette Winterson for so long and never heard HIS name before? Truly a major writer of fierce, rich, trenchant prose and a nuanced sense of the absurd, reminiscent of the Samuel Beckett who wrote "Murphy," and also an innovator of Joycean, Sterne-ish, deAssis-ian resources. (Does this mean he is the equal of Joyce? Probably not, but then again, this is my first acquaintance with Sorrentino.) This novel of discontinuous chapters is as memoir-like--a paean to a long-lost Brooklyn--as anything this playful and perverse can be said to be. Not that it is not also a meditation on death and loss. Only a considerable writer can have it both ways. Sorrentino is such, and in me has likely found himself another big fan. Huzzahs!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars May be Experimental, but Very Accessible!, March 4, 2005

By 

S. Henkels (Devon, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Casino (Paperback)

The 52 short pieces here cover (mainly) 1940's-1950's Brooklyn. Starting with death, they finish with some of the funniest pieces of paranoid ever. In fact,some could be incredible simply for a stand up comic! Compared to most other "Experimental" fiction, this is really a breezy, at times slightly bizarre, but very accessible and amusing, read. For those who enjoy the old musical "Standards", try to discover how many titles and lines are hiden in these pages! All in all , very worthy and fun read!