A novel by Gilbert Sorrentino, with a preface by Christopher Sorrentino
February 1, 2010 • 5.5 x 8.5 • 144 pages • 978-1-56689-233-9
The final novel from the postmodern American master.
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.
About the Author
A luminary of American literature, Gilbert Sorrentino was a boyhood friend of Hubert Selby, Jr., a confidant of William Carlos Williams, a two-time PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, and the recipient of a Lannan Literary Lifetime Achievement Award. He taught at Stanford for many years before returning to his native Brooklyn and published over thirty books before his death in 2006.
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.
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