Customer Reviews

Mulligan Stew: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the course of its 450 odd pages, Gil Sorrentino's aptly titled Mulligan Stew manages to embrace nearly every one of the flaws and shortcomings cited by various publishing house editors in the collection of rejection notices that he serves up as a kind of ironic prologue to the novel itself. Or are the letters part and parcel of the novel itself? Or is it a novel? Beats the hell out of me.

Yes, it's too long. Yes, it reads like an incoherent goulash of unrelated bits and scraps of ideas which seem to have been jettisoned from previous experiments during the revision and editing process. And the mystic caverns of technique he drags us down into have already been illuminated and thoroughly mapped out by the likes of Barth, Sukenick, Queneau, Robbes-Grillet and company. The characters are cardboard cut-outs and the dialogue flops back and forth between dull cliches and stagey pretentiousness. But wait. Sorrentino has created only one character, a disintegrating hack named Lamont, who exists in a frenzied denial of his failure as a writer. It's Lamont who's responsible for all that purple prose. Right? His work in progress is so bad that his characters begin to plot an escape just to distance themselves from the awful dialogue he keeps putting in their mouths. But that must be Sorrentino's doing. Right?

Are we being offered a window on the punishing battering a writer's psyche must endure as he goes into battle to defend the integrity of his craft against the evil philistines of the commercial publishing industry? Or is Sorrentino just putting a good one over on us while cleaning out his old notebooks? I don't know. The damn thing is diabolical. But it sure was great fun to read. And, really, isn't that enough?

Fans of Gilbert Sorrentino are in for a treat (think cupcakes) when they feast their eyes on Mulligan Stew. The talented author seems to pour his entire talent into this concoction of fictional delight. Or is it fiction? Can writer Antony Lamont, sometimes narrator, a character of declining fortune in words and love and friends, be Sorrentino disguised?

Regardless of whether there is a touch of the autobiographical, Mulligan Stew has something for everyone. But do not expect that all will be resolved and tied into the typical resolution of the novel, that the path Sorrentino begins wends its way to a tidy conclusion. No, "dear, gentle friend" (359), between chapter 1 and the nonsensical dialogue that is the final ingredient of the stew our dear author throws in an entire repertoire of fictional devises. He mixes them up and throws them on the page for the reader to glean every delicious morsel of the making of fiction.

Mulligan Stew is at times absurd, its characters take on dual existence, both in the novel and in lives of their own. Ned, Martin, and Lamont, each unravel in various ways, fictional Lamont's decline mirroring that of his fictional protagonists. Paralysis affects them both. Martin seems stuck in the cabin forever and Lamont is seemingly stuck writing of Martin and Ned forever.
Sorrentino employs an epistolary form throughout this metafictional work, beginning with a parade of letters from publishers rejecting his work. His letters reveal relationships and emotional states of the characters, mainly those of Lamont, the frustrated writer. Where letters expose the agitated state of the Lamont, our true author sprinkles different styles throughout. Juxtaposed against the darkness of Ned's predicament, Sorrentino inserts humor and throws in erotica to suit a different audience. His use of varied syntax, clichés, and metaphors are mixed in with varied vernacular, poetry, and endless lists. He borrows characters and words from past authors and poets (Fitzgerald and Frost, for example). For the visual art lover, the background for the scene in Chapter 8, beginning on page 226, is reminiscent of Hopper's "Nighthawks." The work is a veritable handbook of how to and not to for the aspiring writer.

Between the storms, the blue sky, and the jigsaw puzzle pieces, Sorrentino drops hints of the elements of the novel: pay attention to the tense, take care with your inventory, do not use those worn out tired old phrases, and remember where you leave your characters. Sorrentino seems to pull in all he knows of life and love and writing and drops the coagulation of these experiences in the form of words on each page. This is a must read for the creative writer and clever reader who appreciates the bounty of words in our language laid out in every conceivable manner. There is no end to the mystery that Sorrentino has stirred up for his audience, and no end to the discovery of delectable tidbits of writing wisdom found on each page of the stew the talented Gilbert Sorrentino artistically concocted for the aspiring writer and the fan of the beauty of fiction.

Sorentino's "Mulligan Stew" is a roller coaster ride not intended for the faint of heart. The reading can be tedious at first but stick with it and you'll be in for the literary ride of your life.
A conglomeration of rejection letters, journals, poems, love letters, and notebook pages interspersed with a storyline about a writer writing about a writer, it at first glance appears to be the writings of an easily distracted child. As one delves deeper into the work, however, it takes on the appearance of an abstract painting, each part a different color that when brought together as ingeniously as Sorentino has done, form what one can only call a masterpiece.

"Sorrentino creates a masterpiece as he writes a novel about an author who is also composing a novel. "A Novel within a Novel" What an interesting concept Sorrentino creates and also a difficult task has he tries to retain the interest of his readers. The book is a bit challenging as the reader jumps from Sorrentino's story to Lamont's story. At times it gets a little twisted and you wonder which story you are actually reading. Even the characters, Ned and Haplin, feel like they would like to escape Lamont's story and jump into another author's book."

Mulligan stew is, simply put, one of the strangest ideas for a novel that has ever been concieved. Perhaps it's most striking feature isn't how good the writing is - it's how bad the writing is. "Lamont's" writing can instill laughter at times, groans occasionally, and sometimes, I had to just set the book down for a while to take a break from it. Indeed, the only thing more interesting than the novel-within-a-novel plot is Sorrentino's ability to create something that manages to be laughably stupid, ironic, knuckle-draggingly low-brow, and at the same time very intellectual. Most other authors would shy away from writing schlock, but Sorrentino has no qualms with pointing out what makes bad writing, throwing it in your face. Indeed, it seems the whole writing industry is on his chopping block in this book, with poems, stories, and letters that make you think to yourself "I bet there are really writers out there who couldn't do any better than this garbage." Sorrentino has done something unique and risky with this book. And he has pulled it off exceptionally well.

If you can wrap your head around the irony and the scope of what he's tried to do here, you'll enjoy this book. If you prefer a straight-forward story, move along. This book isn't for you.

The funniest two bits in the book are 1) the parody of erotic fiction ('Nameless Shamelessness,' I think) and 2) the gag where Sorrentino parodies cowboy fiction by giving the cowpokes heavy brogues. If you find the rest of the postmodern structure bogging you down, flip to one of those parts.

But you probably won't be bored, because the novel flips back and forth between a writer's notebook, that writer's work, and the life that a few famous literary characters lead while not working. It's like what a Charlie Kaufman movie would be like if Charlie Kaufman could write good novels instead of mediocre movies.

This is one of my favorite books. Goes beyond being a novel and is a hilarious read.

It's essential to note that anyone who codifies the "postmodern literary aesthetic" by complaining of its "woeful misuse" has written a priggishly self-impugning critique. I suspect that Sorrentino himself authored Richardson's review.