A Strange Commonplace by Gilbert Sorrentino

Even before I learned that Gilbert Sorrentino was a critic's darling and the recipient of two (two!) Guggenheim Fellowships, I enjoyed and respected his work without always being able to explain why. Now that I know about his (two!) Guggenheim Fellowships, I can enjoy and respect his work without even bothering to read it. 

There is a slippery quality to some of his writing, by which I mean that I can simultaneously enjoy reading him while retaining very little. A Strange Commonplace is not slippery in that way, but it is blurry. Chapter titles are reused, and character's names are reused--either that or characters reappear in multiple forms. Almost any chapter could begin with almost any of the twenty-six chapter titles. It leaves the reader feeling as though they've spent a couple of hours sitting too close to the television, which is sort of (but not at all) what the epigraph promises:


                                            I passed through
     extraordinary places, as vivid as any
     I ever saw where the storm had broken
     the barrier and let through
     a strange commonplace: Long, deserted avenues
     with unrecognized names at the corners and
     drunken people with completely
     foreign manners.

     --William Carlos Williams

A Strange Commonplace is a vortex of cliches. Each of the novel's fifty-two chapters--populated with drunken people with completely foreign manners--tell very similar stories about ugly and deteriorating adulterous relationships. It's like switching between 100 channels of soap operas in that there is no sustained story but it matters little, as the plots are all predictable and identical.

If Sorrentino's project is to retell a cliche story in fifty-two not-very-different ways and yet still create a novel that is fresh and interesting, he's more or less succeeded. Sorrentino's passion for writing comes through even when he's writing about "somewhat fragmentary people--perhaps sketchy is a better descriptive" (108) in passionless affairs. He's taken a full shelf of novels about betrayal and disappointment, reduced them in a saucepan to a few pages, and used the reduction to flavor (with irony) the real meal, the joy of language.

While A Strange Commonplace is worth reading, if you haven't dined on Sorrentino before, start with Little Casino (and make sure to try his Mulligan Stew). A Strange Commonplace is full of reprehensible characters doing unkind things to each other, and first time readers may not be inclined to pick up his other works, which would be a shame.

Try as it might, this review cannot settle on a single metaphor. It cannot decide if Commonplace is a television show or a meal, but that's okay. It's likely equal parts image and flavor to savor.

Overall Chainsaw Rating: