SORRENTINO on SORRENTINO: an interview with Christopher Sorrentino

This is an interview with writer Christopher Sorrentino. We go over all the novels of the great writer Gilbert Sorrentino (1929-2006). Who better to talk about these books. His son, Christopher, and me, one of the only people who has interviewed the great man.

Interview 1994: http://portable-infinite.blogspot.com/2006/05/gilbert-sorrentino-interview.html

I forgot to mention a few things in this interview about Gilbert Sorrentino. I originally met him around 1989 when I was working on the Grove Press Number. I went down to Stanford one time and he signed a copy of Misterioso which had just come out. Another time I headed down to Stanford and sat in on one of his classes, where they were discussing William Carlos Williams that particular day. Some time in 1994, we did another interview for Cups Magazine. Soon after that I was introduced to his son, Christopher, who was also living in San Francisco, and was about to publish his first novel. 

Hubert Selby Jr was a life-long friend with Gilbert Sorrentino. They both grew up in the same part of Brooklyn.

In 2020, a section of Leif Erickson Park, in Bay Ridge, is named after Gilbert Sorrentino.

• The Sky Changes (1966)
• Steelwork (1970)
• Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971)
• Splendide-Hôtel (1973)
• Flawless Play Restored: The Masque of Fungo (1974)
• Mulligan Stew (1979)
• Aberration of Starlight (1980)
• Crystal Vision (1981)
• Blue Pastoral (1983)
• Odd Number (1985)
• Rose Theatre (1987)
• Misterioso (1989)
• Under the Shadow (1991)
• Red the Fiend (1995)
• Gold Fools (1999)
• Little Casino (2002)
• The Moon in its Flight (short fiction, 2004)
• Lunar Follies (2005)
• A Strange Commonplace (2006)
• The Abyss of Human Illusion (2010)

In PART ONE of the interview we talk about the novels The Sky Changes (1966) to Mulligan Stew (1979):

In PART TWO of the interview we talk about the novels Aberration of Starlight (1980) and after: