Rose Theatre [Hardcover]

Gilbert Sorrentino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1987

Rose Theatre is the second book of the Sorrentino trilogy, the first book of which, Odd Number, was published in 1985. Odd Number investigated the ways in which "facts" assert themselves through the various encodings of experience contained in the answers to a rigidly circumscribed set of questions; i.e., the answers, whether colored by prejudice, opinion, distortions both conscious and unconscious, or presented as objective retorts based upon absolute data, reveal themselves as wholly incapable of telling anything that might be construed as the truth. As the book progresses, all is contradicted, refuted, thrown into turmoil.

Rose Theatre, concentrating on data already posited, plus new data, endeavors to "correct" the errors of Odd Number. Everything is filtered through the experiences attendant upon the lives of the major female characters of the first book, yet as we read we discover that the new information has no authority to dispel the data given therein. Rather, Rose Theatre, in its desire to stabilize and clarify, adds new and unsettling material to that which we already possess.

By turns, both deeply sinister and wildly comic, Rose Theatre continues Sorrentino's assault on the idea of realism in fiction, culminating here in a world that is in every way as mysterious, beguiling, and filled with contradictions as the one we inhabit each day.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Whereas Odd Number ( LJ 10/1/85) effected a question-and-answer presentation of "facts," this second volume in a trilogy takes a more narrative look at the women caught in the same urban Sargasso. The more factual the history, the more doubtful the fact; but then it is Sorrentino's aim to explore that fertile region stretching between the writer's choice and the reader's awareness. The evolving text demands not just attention but participation as possibilities mount and the author asks, "Which do you prefer?" Those readers unprepared for such a task will find Rose Theatre too demanding. Others will find it a refreshing and rewarding visit with one of the most creative writers publishing today.Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A refreshing and rewarding visit with one of the most creative writers publishing today." -- Library Journal 11-15-87

"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." -- Robert Cohen, New York Times Book Review 12-20-87

"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." -- Washington Post Book World 12-13-87

"Sorrentino's fiction does not reveal a world of sense, of reason, but portrays with equal brilliance our fall into nonsense, into the Babel of our everyday lives." -- Douglas Messerli, Los Angeles Times Book Review 12-6-87

Product Details

• Hardcover: 139 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr; 1st edition (November 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0916583236
• ISBN-13: 978-0916583231
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,667,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Second Book, April 19, 2004

By 

alexander laurence (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rose Theatre (Hardcover)

This new novel is the second of a trilogy which started in 1985 when Gilbert Sorrentino published Odd Number, a novel which told of the happenings of a group of people mostly from New York, when they arrived at a party in Vermont. The characters are drawn from other previous Sorrentino novels like Mulligan Stew and Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. This novel challenges the idea of the "facts." So written in a time when writing is losing its art and resembling the newspapers. Why do so many American novelists ignore the literary past?

The whole novel is based on a series of questions and answers, which are repeated to acquire clarity. There are three chapters. This only confuses things more. The last chapter uses maps and tries to clarify "what really happened," but only contradicts those things which we were absolutely sure did happen. This is a fiction which undermines itself.

Rose Theatre picks up where the first novel leaves off, concentrating on the female characters. The women include some writers: Annette Lorpailleur, the supposed author of "La Bouche Metallique"; Sheila Henry, the author of "The Orange Dress"; and Lorna Flambeaux, who wrote some erotic poems entitled "The Sweat Of Love."

Some portions of this book were published in some magazines earlier last year, in The Review of Contemporary Literature and Conjunctions. The second novel is much more complex than the first, exhibiting a plethora of language unlike anything in the English language. Sorrentino writes using a montage of signifiers, which shows that he has definitely said good-bye to days of James Joyce and Flann O'Brien, and suggests that he has moved into a rich space of literature that is absolutely new.

This book is about relationships, seen from the perspective of women, if that matters; but more importantly this is a novel where language is put on stage, in the "theatre", to act out its possibilities, to question itself, and to question its possibility to ever tell the truth. The language is a wild show that relates the identities of these characters.

Gilbert Sorrentino is a writer that is so ahead of his time that we cannot ignore him for the fear that we may be left far behind, never being able to catch up with the new.