A Strange Commonplace

By Gilbert Sorrentino

The author of Mulligan Stew presents “a savage, baffling and beguiling novel about the wreckage that infidelity leaves behind” (Kirkus Reviews).
 
Borrowing its title from a William Carlos Williams poem, A Strange Commonplace lays bare the secrets and dreams of characters whose lives are intertwined by coincidence and necessity, possessions and experience.
 
From the boozy 1950s to the culturally vacuous present, through the jungle of city streets and suburban bedroom communities, lines blur between families and acquaintances, violence and love, hope and despair. As fathers try to connect with their children, as writers struggle for credibility, as wives walk out, and an old man plays Russian roulette with a deck of cards, their stories resonate with poignancy and savage humor—familiar, tragic, and cathartic.
 
“One never expects traditional plots from Sorrentino . . . but one can usually count on wit, vigorous prose, and an unflinchingly bleak take on life. . . . The novel is divided into fifty-two discrete parts—a dazzlingly original deck of cards.” —The New Yorker
 
“[Sorrentino] can be cutting in his satire, and bullying in his eroticism, and now adds anger to the mix as he portrays a circle of struggling New Yorkers living back in the sexist, alcohol-sodden, and hypocritical 1950s on into the egomaniacal present.” —Booklist
 
“Sorrentino [is] a writer like no other. He’s learned, companionable, ribald, brave, mathematical, at once virtuosic and somehow without ego.” —Jeffrey Eugenides
 
“For decades, Gilbert Sorrentino has remained a unique figure in our literature. He reminds us that fiction lives because artists make it.” —Don DeLillo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781566892872

Gilbert Sorrentino

In addition to his books of poetry and criticism, Gilbert Sorrentino is the author of fourteen novels, including Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, The Sky Changes, and Mulligan Stew. He has received numerous grants and awards throughout his career, including the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two NEA Fellowships and a Lannan Literary Award.