parlando

gilbert sorrentino, r.i.p.

Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Writers.

It's a bad month for my culture heroes. I just found out that Gilbert Sorrentino died Thursday of lung cancer. Sorrentino was my favorite living writer. His voice was as vivid and singular as anyone who ever wrote: cranky, hilarious, acerbic, coldly observant, graceful, a brilliant mimic of all kinds of talk and writing, nothing out of place; even his deliberate awkwardnesses were perfect. He was off-puttingly snobbish, and didn't suffer fools at all: a type I usually dislike, and that rarely are as clever or superior as they think they are. He was. He disdained literary politics, including the literary politics of the avant-garde, so while he had a passionate following, he never found the audience or critical respect that he merited.

He was 77. I'm not shocked as I was by Grant McLennan's death, but I'm sad. Here is a good set of audio files of Sorrentino reading and being interviewed.

On the Well, we play a Guess the Author game with quotes from their work. Eight years ago I used Sorrentino. Here are several passages from his novels:

What were some of the things about T___ that made women admire and men distrust him?

To speak but of the moment, summer 1939: He swam too well, he owned a shining green Plymouth coupe (which word he pronounced, only half-jokingly, coo-pay), he often wore white and pale yellow to set off his deep tan, he owned a half-dozen pastel slack suits, he was divorced but did not speak of his former wife to his fellow guests except in mawkishly admiring terms, he smoked Rum and Maple pipe tobacco into which he shredded bitter chocoloate, his hair was always perfectly cut and combed and gleamed with rose oil, he was a successful salesman for a meat-cutting-machine company and did much of his work by telephone, work which he somewhat speciously characterized as "stealing money."

To return for a moment to T___'s coupe -- or coo-pay: Why did this mundane vehicle have the effect that it did indeed have upon people?

It spoke of independence and the devil-may-care, of freedom and youthful rakishness. Thus it appealed to the feminine libido and awakened masculine envy and fear of cuckoldry.

Was T___ indeed a maker of cuckolds?

If rumor is to be given credence, the answer is "yes." Three men putatively so served were: Lewis D. Fielding, a junkman of Ossining, N.Y., through his wife, Barbara; Alfred Bennett Martinez, a plumber of Ozone Park, N.Y., through his wife, Danielle; William V. Bell, a shop teacher of Paterson, N.J., through his wife, Joanne. These are not their real names.

We have been given certain intelligence concerning particular words and phrases used by our subject, these serving to set him apart from what he thought of as the hoi polloi. May we be enlightened as to the nature of these distinguishing uses of the language?

He delighted in "ab-soid!"; "coozy" for "cozy"; "nook" as a term for the female genitalia; he always "built" a drink; "sunny honeys" was his name for fried eggs; he pronounced "croquet" "crocket," save when he was losing; a navy-blue jacket that he wore on semi-formal occasions was his "din-din coat" or "soup catcher"; his briar pipes were, in winter, "mitt warmers" and in summer, "skeeter chasers"; his Plymouth coo-pay was affectionately dubbed his "perambulator"; and, among men whom he knew fairly well, he called his moustache his "womb broom" or his "pussy bumper."

Was he an absolute fraud regarding his relationship with M___?

Perhaps not an absolute fraud.

[. . .]

While it is not my wont to discuss my philosophy of life willy-nilly and in whatever environings at all -- particularly on this offensive and odiously cockaroachish street corner, the Arab says, you tempt me sorely to present a briefly compendous sketch of my basic creedo because of your remarks anent the vague nature of good and evil and their effect upon the homo known as sapiens, in short, us.

Go ahead, Fat Frankie says. Me and Big Duck are all ears. Right, Duck?

Big Duck grunts into a glassful of vanilla malted.

Allow and permit me then to present my ideas in simple wise, and the Arab takes up a position midway between the candy counter and the soda cooler. Psychologocal behaviorism suggests with stern puissance that people who tread paths of evil, however disguised, tend to fall, or get pushed, a posteriori, into disrepute. Holistically, and tautologically, this is sometimes given the terminology of "falling on evil days" -- odd contradiction! Allow me then, for a brief sec, to give you a rather puerilitous phenomogical example, invented out of wholesome cloth, yet still basically a mere outline. Still and yet, it obtains a certain odd logic that draws me. May I go on?

Onward! Fat Frankie says, keeping his place in Sexology with an index finger.

Let us suppose that what mankind takes to be success -- in terms, of course, of ethical objectivism -- may be presented paradigmantically, as an enormously high tower built upon an equally high or maybe perhaps even a higher mountain. This homely image comes from certain obscurant works on dialectic materials, yet it will suffice to serve our purpose. Take then this skyscraper of looming -- nirvana!

Holy Moses! Big Duck says.

Upon, so to speak, this beetling scarp, two men, pure products of the raging debate between the forces of appearance and those of reality, climb up, flushed with victory. They are successfully, or so they think, assaulting the tower of Aristotelian nous with pick and hook and rope and grappanels and heavy-cleated hobnail clunkish boots, all of which have been made in the small yet renowned workshop down in the valley that I might as well entitle Neo-Platonic, Inc., if you follow my analogous metaphor?

Holy cow! Big Duck says.

Go on, Arab, Fat Frankie says. This is getting pretty good.

What's up? Irish Billy asks, entering the store with Curtin.

Sh, Fat Frankie says. The Arab is explaining his philosophy.

Oh boy, Irish Billy says. Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

[. . .]

I have said that Lou willed himself into poetry. How this came about is a long and involved story. Let it stand that he did so. At first, the poems were shown to friends, or kept to himself, but later he began to publish them in little magazines. He was a poet. I would guess that William Carlos Williams was responsible for this in the way that George Herriman might be held responsible for Roy Lichtenstein. These masters cannot be blamed for the aberrant desires of a minority of the populace. It comes down to: "Hell, I can do that too." And you're off. If things fall right, you'll be accepted after a few years, and take your place among that great body of useless grinds who won't for a minute stop expressing themselves. Borrow, borrow, you can get into Williams and get the very names of shrubs and wildflowers into your work -- anything but the terror that dominates your own life. Lou's thinking went, perhaps, like this: If I avoid the demons that maraud through my intelligence, I'll write poems that are acceptable. I'll always know that when the time comes I'll confront these demons and out of that confrontation will come great poetry. The next step however is more difficult and can lead to total destruction. That is: the confrontation with the demons does not necessarily lead to the creation of great art (or any art at all). You can writhe in the darkest pit and filth of yourself and come up with some dull fragment of vers libre, indistinguishable from that of a hundred contemporaries. Thus pain does not guarantee anything. Art, you see, is not interested in your suffering. It is not a muse. Look at Robert Graves -- all that palaver about his Goddess, and all those third rate poems. What is one to do with all that chatter?

But Lou is our man here. What about Lou? Answer: he wants to live a simple life and be a brilliant poet. These things do not go together. (I know I am on the thin ice of romanticism here.) That simple life. I mean, Lou was one of those who thought enviously of men who lived -- all of the year, or most of it anyway -- in the woods, or the mountains, or at the beach, etc, etc. That was the simple life. There they were, sturdy with boots, pipes, and notebooks, chopping wood for the fire, observing birds, checking out the sunset, the sunrise, the changing seasons. Shrewd and loving observations of their neighbors, who had finally after all this time come to regard them as acceptable, etc, etc. Nauseating stuff. These dolts keep these enormous notebooks in which they tell us city slickers all about nature, and their lives in Maine, or Big Sur, or Colorado, or some other goddamned place, full of trees and the rest of the stuff of poesie. God, what a fucking bore it all is. They lead the simple life, they note all this trash down in those damned notebooks. "Observe the turning of the leaves." "What bird call was that I heard this morning in the icy stillness?" Arrghh. "Today I finally got the old stump out. Celebrated with a half-pint of applejack." And we read this swill. Not one year goes by but some little magazine runs excerpts from one of these "wood journals" by a poet -- there is also a small collection of his verse in the same issue. The poems have titles like: "Top of Pink Tit Mt.: Cold Beans." And we sit choking on the polluted air of divers cities, marveling at the freedom that can open the world of such verse to its practitioner. Simplicity! The simple life! It was what Lou wanted -- or thought he wanted, Simple life. Brilliant poet. With demons in reserve for his later years, when he could haul them out and write his Great Poems of Maturity. If somehow Sheila could be fitted in, i.e., if she would be a Good Wife, that would be fine too. Lou was one of those men who confused passing happiness or misery with the sources of art. The world is full of them. When one disaster or ecstasy is over, they turn to another. The war in Vietnam has spawned a thousand poets. They think their rage and impotence will make the poem. It is a banal truism that all the occasional poet needs to write a poem is an occasion. There is no lack of them in the world. That picayune poetic charge galvanized by a new friend, another storm, some red barn somewhere, anything.

[. . .]

This bored editor, how cool he had to be. No offend the signed writer. No insult Guy. At the same time, be sure to keep Guy sure of himself (ha-ho) by inviting him to send on future work. This is all such old stuff that I'll make up the letter that Vance Whitestone sent. I'll try to include all the elements of a good rejection letter. Those of you who are writers will recognize the stink immediately. You readers will understand slightly the boredom of getting one of these letters. O.K.

Dear Mr Lewis:
I'm sorry -- and I really mean sorry -- to have to tell you that your book of stories, American Vector, is a project that we can't see our way clear to publishing at the present time. Both the second reader and I were impressed at the way you handle the shifting locales and characters that reoccur throughout the book, and we both felt that many of the scenes really came alive. But the intensity of the title story as well as the longish concluding story, "Bath of Snow," isn't really matched in the rest of the book. In the very tough fiction market of today, we think it would be only fair -- both to us and to you -- to present a "package" (if you will excuse such a word) that would make its own way.

I know that it must be small comfort to you, but I want to tell you that you certainly can write, and that I would be very interested in seeing any of your future work.

Thank you so much for letting us see your manuscript. I'm mailing it back to you today. Please give my regards to Jim when you next write him.
With best wishes,
Vance Whitestone
Fiction Editor

There are a number of phrases in this letter that can be regarded as having taken their place along with such jewels as "raining cats and dogs," "snarled traffic," and "incredibly naive." The reader will see them for himself, and must not be surprised if I tell him that there is no rejection letter ever written by man that does not contain at least one of them. Guy believed this letter. Oh, he didn't believe it, but he thought it sounded -- right. Sincere. (As if an editor would not sound that way.) And he was flattered that Vance thought that he certainly could write. Here is a test for editors to see if they are fit to pass judgment on books. They must get six right.

1. What contribution to jazz drumming did Big Sid Catlett make? Jo Jones?
2. What is uniquely excellent about Paul Goodman's fiction?
3. What is a swizzle stick? A swizzle?
4. Name the great trombone section in Ellington's 1938 band.
5. What is Jack Kerouac's best piece of writing?
6. Explain how a critic like John Simon cloaks his ignorance.
7. Recount two legends on how the Gibson got its name. (This should be easy.)
8. What is Kenneth Patchen's best poem?
9. Point out a failure of one in The Sky Changes.
10. What is the basic flaw in Norman Mailer's fiction?

But I am amusing myself here -- perhaps cruelly, I admit. There's no reason to dump on editors like this. Guy himself told me many years ago that it would be difficult for me to become a cult figure -- my secret heart's desire -- if I insisted on railing against the world of publishing. I ceased to rail for years, just occasionally trying my hand at old Sicilian spells to persuade their Dobermans and German shepherds to bite the asses out of their pants. A jolly surprise on those bright mornings when one rises to greet the day. etc. Down to the beach with a jug of screwdrivers, etc. Hey, there's Larry Rivers, and there's Leo Castelli, son of a bitch! I hear Bruce Friedman may be out for the weekend. I mean just once, in the middle of that, to have those expensive mutts tear some ass.

Velma has been marking good passages in Sorrentino's Flann O'Brienesque masterpiece, Mulligan Stew, which I will transcribe and put up later.

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