Customer Reviews

A Strange Commonplace

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

 

 

This book quickly reminded me of a childhood experience - what I thought was an accidental drowning, I later discovered my older brother believed to be suicide and my Mother believed to be murder. Sorrentino has captured that fractured view of the world as the stories/chapters circle around the same themes and characters. Was it incest or a lover? cancer, accident or still alive? Who cheats on whom? The short chapters, many standing as short-shorts in their own right, have an honesty and humor that makes delightful reading - and leave you with the same almost but not quite grasped sensation as reality.

The New Yorker reviewer called these stories "dazzlingly original," a descriptive that may, appropriately enough, be a warning to some and a lure to others.

To fans of Sorrentino's previous work, I can say that much of the narrative lines, and tone, recall his earlier "Aberration of Starlight" rather than his works of comedy (e.g. "Blue Pastoral") or full-bore literary prestigitation (e.g., "Pack of Lies"). So extramarital affairs, booze, breakup and visitation squabbles, the mundane despairs of little lives dominate the subject matter. The author is 76, so references range from Philco radios and Johnny Weissmuller to organic food stores and Meryl Streep. Interspersed with the narratives, incidentally, must be some of the most convincing dream sequences in all literature.

Sorrentino's prodigious intellect has set himself the project of making 52 discrete mini-stories as enfolding and nuanced and complete as another author's novellas. Some only a page long, interweaving certainly, teasingly recycling the same cast members (or just names) and circumstances and props, nevertheless they are discrete entities and not "chapters." Age, perhaps, has inclined Sorrentino to a breathtaking economy. If you read not merely to consume stories and characters but to savor the forms and surprises possible with literary art, this writer is a must.

I modestly hold that Gilbert Sorrentino may be the best living American author. If you aren't familiar with him, as I wasn't only four years ago, but you enjoy innovative and modernist or proto-modernist literature of, for example, the best of Lawrence Sterne, Machado de Assis, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, Milan Kundera, Peter Handke, Georges Perec, Robert Coover, Nicholson Baker, Julian Barnes, or Jeanette Winterson, you should go for Sorrentino immediately. This book is very accessible, but "Little Casino" might be an even better, because less bleak, place to start. Then research the others: you can make up for our book culture's outrageous oversight. It has long held Sorrentino a "writer's writer," but I beg to differ.

When author and essayist Gilbert Sorrentino passed away on May 18, 2006, it was a tragedy that didn't even gather headlines outside the literary community. There were no accolades and praise of the kind that followed the deaths of Douglas Adams or Hunter S. Thompson, or that will surely salute the death of Kurt Vonnegut.

This lack of tribute is insulting, for Sorrentino has done as much with the English language as any of the more public authors. In over 30 collections of poetry and prose Sorrentino mastered the art of experimental fiction, with titles such as "Mulligan Stew" and "Odd Number" cutting a manic swathe of words in a way to make any creative writing major fall to their knees.

Thankfully, Sorrentino left a final masterpiece behind to seal his legacy: the harrowing and poignant novel "A Strange Commonplace." Named for a William Carlos Williams poem, Sorrentino's work replicates the poem's image of "Long, deserted avenues with unrecognized names at the corners" with a dreamlike version of his native Brooklyn.

In the vein of his darkly entertaining "Little Casino," "A Strange Commonplace" blends elements of poetry, short fiction and the novel to create a book that can be read all at once or in various intervals depending on mood. The book, split into two sections of 27 short chapters - each section using the same 27 titles - follows the private lives of adulterers, criminals and the disillusioned.

Human folly is Sorrentino's medium, and he is unrelenting in how many snapshots he can take. In "Cold Supper" a woman bakes a gourmet meal and dresses in her best, then proceeds to lock her son outside and walk out the front door to never return. An old man decides to kill himself if he draws a flush in "An Apartment," while three young men devour their meals and molest a waitress simultaneously in "In the Diner."

Much like the cut-up surrealism of William S. Burroughs, Sorrentino has several recurring elements in each of his pieces. However, while Burroughs used sadistic doctors and rusted revolvers to show junk sickness, Sorrentino's images are tied with heartbreak - a pearl-grey homburg hat, Worcestershire sauce, a children's jungle story. These elements give the novel an odd sense of continuity, each possessed by a pained character.

Of course, not all readers will be entranced at the start by Sorrentino's style, as the experimental prose requires a careful reading to obtain full understanding. Often, as in the ethereal "In Dreams," his characters become unstuck in reality, the world changing the minute they look away. Additionally, the work's dark tone leaves not a single character happy at the end, sucked into alcoholism and untimely death.

But happiness is not the image Sorrentino is trying to pull off in this book - these stories are 52 "magical route[s] to oblivion." In many ways it fits the original meaning of commonplace, a book designed to compile all different forms of knowledge that capture the author's interest - and at the very end of his life, Sorrentino was trying to compile the sense of "the man in the casket is the same ... as the man at the casket."

It is very depressing that Sorrentino is no longer around to write fiction of this caliber, but anyone who is sucked in by "A Strange Commonplace" can be comforted by the fact that he left a vast body of work behind to explore. As Sorrentino's final work, "A Strange Commonplace" is like the last bite of an exotic dessert - not suited for every palate, but for those who acquire a taste for it indescribably delicious.

This novel is more an intertwining of short stories. We revisit characters and relationships throughout. Sorrentino can write complex situations in a simple way, but he can make your head spin with the interactions of his characters.

If you have never read Sorrentino, do NOT start with "Mulligan Stew". Try this one or "Aberration of Starlight" first. He does take some getting used to.

Amazon's book description does a good job of telling you what the book is about. This is not necessarily a fun read, but it is an interesting read.