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The Abyss of Human Illusion
Author(s): Gilbert Sorrentino (Author), Christopher Sorrentino (Preface)
- Publisher: Coffee House Press
- Publication Date: 18 Mar. 2010
- Language: English
- Print length: 144 pages
- ISBN-10: 1566892333
- ISBN-13: 9781566892339
Book Description
Titled after a line from Henry James,
The Abyss of Human Illusion consists of fifty narrative set pieces full of savage humor and cathartic passion—an elegiac paean to the bleak world Gilbert Sorrentino so brilliantly captured in his long and storied career. Mirroring the inexplicable coincidences, encounters, and hallmarks of modern life, this novel revisits familiar characters—the aging artists, miserable couples, crackerjack salesmen, and drunken soldiers of previous books, placing them in familiar landscapes lost in time between the Depression era and some fraudulent bohemia of the present.Editorial Reviews
Review
“[Sorrentino’s] ear for American, especially New York, speech, and his attention to the spirit of place and compassion for the average loser, all defined him as a kindred spirit of such great American humorists as Mark Twain and Peter De Vries.”
—The New York Times Book Review“The writing here is alive—words dance emphatically like the lusty, jazz-spun youngsters who populate Sorrentino’s early fiction. Ultimately, there’s solace to be found in the book’s near-perfect sentences, even when the author is dwelling on the futility of writing sentences.”
—Time Out New York“Sorrentino’s final work remains prickly about those passions, to be sure, but it nonetheless reveals a respect for how the best prose can embody what we call insight.”
—Believer“
The Abyss of Human Illusion is a monumental final work from one of America’s greatest writers.” —Rain Taxi“The juxtaposition of sorrow and humour permeates [Sorrentino’s] work with masterful precision and speaks of a writer whose perspective is both broad and deep.”
—Bookmunch“All Sorrentino’s work rebuts what we were endlessly taught: Literature contains singular imagery, the perfect word lodged in its perfect spot, rounded characters, believable settings, a confident narrative.”
—Literary Review“Sorrentino’s writing is marked by exquisite, and exquisitely unexpected, turns of phrase. . . . [His] prose weds the real with the fantastic, holding up some obscure facet of humanity to the light.”
—NewPages“A unique and highly entertaining story filled with humor that doesn’t hold itself back.”
—Midwest Book Review“This fine, final work by Brooklyn native Sorrentino finds a rueful charm in the ‘wretched clichés’ of ordinary failure.”
—Publishers Weekly“It’s still hard to accept a world without the great Gilbert Sorrentino writing in it. . . . That his final book evinces all the complexity, poetry and dark mirth that made him so revered might not surprise, but it does inspire.”
—Sam LipsyteAbout the Author
The son of Gilbert Sorrentino, Christopher Sorrentino is a novelist and short story writer whose fictional account of the Patty Hearst saga,
Trance, was a finalist for the National Book Award. He lives in Brooklyn.
