In Splendide-Hôtel (1973) Gilbert Sorrentino writes: "I agree with all those who wish to leave something behind that has the flash of the smallest truth. It is, I admit, sadly, sadly, so much of my life's concern." To confront what he calls in Something Said (1984) that "isolate fleck" of truth, he has faced unremittingly the debasement that follows from "manipulation of power through language." In the process he has emerged not only as one of America's finest poets but also as a major novelist of technical resourcefulness and savage dark humor.

William McPheron, in the introduction to his descriptive bibliography of Sorrentino's work, locates him as "a member of that generation which revolted against the dictates of academic verse and consumer fiction by reviving the modernist esthetics of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound." What distinguished Sorrentino, McPheron suggests, was his determination to enter into the world...