Review
"Artful, compressed and striking." --
Shaun O'Connell, Nation 6-21-71"Powerfully evocative." --
Martin Levin, New York Times Book Review 11-8-70"The life described is gutsy; it is harsh; it is often overpowering in its sadness, squalor, and pettiness. And yet Sorrentino captures the poetry and the beauty as well. Highly recommended." --
Library Journal 9-15-70"[Steelwork is] a kind of kinetic scrapbook of sketches, portraits, ephemera from a section of Brooklyn during the years 1935 to 1951. The glancing, non-chronological arrangement and the fascination (in many cases the brilliance) of individual pieces mute the bitterness but also tend to obscure causal relationships so that what comes through most clearly is a general sense of souring as poverty and expectations fade together. Ethnic, economic and especially period distinctions are impressively subtle, with no romanticism but the original; and the brief, essential characterizations could scarcely have more appropriate effectraucous, tender boys whose faces are forgettable but whose growth into suffering and bigotry is not." --
Kirkus Reviews 8-1-70"[Steelwork] offers the usual Sorrentino pleasures: bitter humor, earthy realism, self-aware narration, long lists (one chapter enumerates various sexual myths), a sense of nostalgia that is frequently undercut, and an altogether addictive style." --
Washington Post Book World 6-14-92