… Lawton, Oklahoma … Fort Sill had made this grim burg possible.
… “the old homestead,” as the whole family liked to call it … This is not true.
… too-tight sweater … Satan was happy to reveal her nipples to Dad.
… smoking and looking out … She was partial to Pall Malls, which one Jack McCarthy called “the whore’s cigarette.”
… slept in bathtubs or in the car … And sometimes without a pillow.
… If he even knew she’d left … This is an exaggeration. Of course he knew.
— XLVI —
… makes us look anew at literature … This “anew” look seems to occur every publishing season—something like the annual return of the flu.
— XLVII —
… one dump after another … E.g., Far West Cafe, Bejar Saloon, Juan’s Chili Cellar, Hot Pepper Place. All these places served Pearl beer, Jax beer, and Carta Blanca beer, with small bowls of salted green olives on the side.
… a hideously figured shirt … Sometimes known as a “Hawaiian” shirt, it was often referred to in the army as an “AWOL” shirt, and was, fittingly, a magnet for vindictive M.P.’s.
… the Cactus Hotel … Not a bad name for a Southwestern fleabag circa 1950.
… chaotic Sunday look … The barracks looks as if it will never be clean or orderly again.
… hot Meskin ass … The speaker might have said “pussy”; in this context, the words are interchangeable.
… “Fuckin’ A”… this expression was supposedly first used by soldiers of the 1st Army, which patch was a stylized capital A. The expression implies strong agreement.
— XLVIII —
… “Eyetalians”… Few people, save for clusters of yahoos, pronounce the word this way: a triumph for tolerance.
… a faint accent … His accent, like hers, was almost pure New York (see The Oxford Companion to the English Language, p.693–4).
… gray Persian lamb coat … A prized fur in the forties and early fifties, thought to be more fashionable and chic than black fur.
… Black Hand … An “American” term for the Mafia or Cosa Nostra: never used by Italians or Sicilians, a kind of tabloid name.
— XLIX —
… like cultists … And/or those who chat with God.
… smoked a lot of marijuana … E.g., Bangalore Blast, Mexicali Mania, Super Head, etc.
… rebels … The word is used with pronounced irony, of course.
… broccoli-rutabaga casserole … This dish may taste better than it sounds.
… a macramé class … An “adult education” class….
… carrot cake … Her secret ingredient was a pinch of thyme.
… Akina … whose real name was Arlene.
… diligently fake disreputability … This was about the time when the Dom closed and the Electric Circus took its place. It was the beginning of the end of the Lower East Side, now a neighborhood of staggeringly, albeit carefully disguised, bourgeois sensibilities.
— L —
… didn’t understand Los Angeles … Los Angeles cannot be understood.
… sunny, blue Los Angeles day … the sort of day that rapists and mass killers come out to pursue their interests.
… performed fellatio … No dream: the man wore a filthy Deere cap.
… New York was of no help … It didn’t even look as if it could be of help, unlike L.A., which seemed to explode with optimism and gold in the streets.
… pull-out Carlyle couch … This may well have been a Carlyle copy.
… Svengali … A lot has been written about Svengali, but few are prepared to believe that he ran a Kosher dairy restaurant in Minsk.
… What did St. Louis look like? … He imagined a different city each time he thought of the place.
… strange and alien St. Louis … Well … maybe, but pedestrian.
Some of these commentaries may not be wholly reliable.
GILBERT SORRENTINO (1929–2006) is the author of more than thirty books, including the classic Mulligan Stew and two novels that were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award: Little Casino and Aberration of Starlight. A luminary of American literature, he was a boyhood friend of Hubert Selby, Jr., a confidant of William Carlos Williams, and the recipient of a Lannan Literary Lifetime Achievement Award. Once an editor at Grove Press, Sorrentino taught at Stanford University for many years before returning to his native Brooklyn.
OTHER COFFEE HOUSE PRESS BOOKS BY GILBERT SORRENTINO
A STRANGE COMMONPLACE
ISBN 978-1-56689-182-0 | $14.95 | NOVEL
Borrowing its title from a William Carlos Williams poem, A Strange Commonplace lays bare the secrets and dreams of characters whose lives are intertwined by coincidence and necessity, possessions and experience.
LUNAR FOLLIES
ISBN 978-1-56689-169-1 | $14 | STORIES
Lunar Follies takes readers on a deliciously absurd voyage through 53 imaginary gallery, museum, and performance art exhibitions in a satirical guidebook perfect for art lovers and the artistically challenged alike.
THE MOON IN ITS FLIGHT
ISBN 978-1-56689-152-3 | $16 | STORIES
Bearing his trademark balance between exquisitely detailed narration, ground-breaking form, and sharp insight into modern life, Gilbert Sorrentino’s definitive collection of stories spans 35 years of his writing career and contains previously unpublished work and stories that first appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories.
LITTLE CASINO
ISBN 978-1-56689-126-4 | $14.95 | NOVEL
In this superb novel composed of fragments of memory, Gilbert Sorrentino captures the unconventional nuances of a conventional world amidst the grit of golden-era Brooklyn. In episodes affectingly textured with penetrating detail, Sorrentino ferrets out the gristle and beauty found in the voices of the scrappy immigrant boys, hard drinking men, and poor, sexy, magenta-lipped women who inhabit the novel.
COLOPHON
The Abyss of Human Illusion was designed at Coffee House Press, in the historic
Grain Belt Brewery’s Bottling House near downtown Minneapolis.
The text is set in Caslon.
FUNDER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Coffee House Press receives major operating support from the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, from Target, and from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and from the National Endowment for the Arts. We have received project support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; the Jerome Foundation; and the National Poetry Series. Coffee House also receives support from: three anonymous donors; Abraham Associates; the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation; Allan Appel; Around Town Literary Media Guides; Bill Berkson; the James L. and Nancy J. Bildner Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; the Buuck Family Foundation; Dorsey & Whitney, llP; Fredrikson & Byron, P.A.; Jennifer Haugh; Anselm Hollo and Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Jeffrey Hom; Stephen and Isabel Keating; Robert and Margaret Kinney; the Kenneth Koch Literary Estate; Allan & Cinda Kornblum; Seymour Kornblum and Gerry Lauter; the Lenfestey Family Foundation; Ethan J. Litman; Mary McDermid; Rebecca Rand; Debby Reynolds; Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner, P.A.; Charles Steffey and Suzannah Martin; John Sjoberg; Jeffrey Sugerman; Stu Wilson and Mel Barker; the Archie D. & Bertha H. Walker Foundation; the Woessner Freeman Family Foundation in memory of David Hilton; and many other generous individual donors.
To you and our many readers across the country,
we send our thanks for your continuing support.
Good books are brewing at www.coffeehousepress.org
Table of Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Preface
The Abyss of Human Illusion
Commentaries
About the Author
Other Coffee House Press Books by Gilbert Sor
rentino
The Abyss of Human Illusion Page 10
