Gilbert Sorrentino on Ross Macdonald

 

As with all committed writers, form, for Ross Macdonald, was not something to chafe against, but to transmute and develop within its own container. Through his early deference to a rigorous and conventionalized form his later, unconventional art flourished. (Gilbert Sorrentino, "Ross Macdonald: Some Remarks on the Limitations of Form," in Something Said: Essays, North Point Press, 1984, p. 226)

...and of course, the same thing is true for Sorrentino himself. 

 

Reading List, Week of 2021-05-23

Turns out I wasn't ready to give up Sorrentino yet, so I'm rereading one of his funniest books... I guess you have to find making fun of and tearing apart the language of turn-of-the-last-century boys' westerns funny, consarn it.... and I do... all this while Ulysses just gets better every time I read it... 

Reading List, Week of 2021-05-24:

*Bloom, Harold. The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life (started)
*Sorrentino, Gilbert. Gold Fools (reread/started)
*Howlett, Kevin. The Beatles: The BBC Archives 1962-1970 (finished)
*Joyce, James. Ulysses (reread/in progress)

Reading List, Week of 2017-08-06

For more on Sorrentino's first novel, see Daniel Green's chapter from his forthcoming book on Sorrentino's work.

Reading List 2017-08-07:

*Le Carré, John. The Secret Pilgrim (started)
*Sun Ra. Collected Works Vol. 1: Immeasurable Equation (started)
*Sorrentino, Gilbert. The Sky Changes (reread/started/finished)
*Clinton, George, with Ben Greenman. Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You? (finished)
*Youngquist, Paul. A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism (finished)
*Jackson, Holbrook. Anatomy of Bibliomania (in progress)
*King, Frank. Walt and Skeezix, Vol. 4: 1927-1928 (reread/in progress)
*Silliman, Ron. The Alphabet (in progress)

The Artistic Necessities of Gilbert Sorrentino

Gilbert Sorrentino on his writing concerns:

The writers who influenced me [among them Joyce and Flann O'Brien] did so because of the deeper influence of genetic coding. They agreed with my own artistic necessities, which are: an obsessive concern with formal structure, a dislike of the replication of experience, a love of digression and embroidery, a great pleasure in false or ambiguous information, a desire to invent problems that only the invention of new forms can solve, and a joy in making mountains out of molehills. (from "Genetic Coding," in Something Said: Essays, p. 265)