“The novel has somehow been posited for us as a kind of ‘mass item,’ and if it sells only 1,500 copies is seen as a failure. I don’t know if that’s even a reasonably intelligent way of thinking.”
--Gilbert Sorrentino
According to a recent piece in the times, Sorrentino's best known novel, Mulligan Stew, one of the "best books of the year" according to the NYT in 1979, has in its 31 year life sold fewer than 25,000 copies. No other statistic speaks to the changes in the publishing industry since its corporate takeover!
As I've said here many times, I consider Sorrento's "The Moon In Its Flight" the finest short story ever written by an American. I can still remember the day I read it, and was blown away, in the wonderful long gone New American Review. M. F. Beal's "Gold" also was published there, Mary being one of Oregon's most neglected writers. How you can have a state-sanctioned anthology of short fiction by Oregon writers and not include Beal or Marilyn Krysl is, well, don't get me started.
Sorrentino in his posthumous book "The Abyss of Human Illusion":
“When he thought of his youth he could scarcely believe that his memories had anything at all to do with the absurd life he was now living, an observation, he knew, that was far from original. Somehow, he had thought that his old age would miraculously produce finer, subtler notions of — what? — life? But he was no better, no cleverer, no more insightful than any shuffling old bastard in the street, absurdly bundled against the slightest breeze.”
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