Under the Shadow (Revised)

Under the Shadow?takes the form of fifty-nine brief sketches with simple nouns as titles. These exquisite vignettes take place on a plane at once surreal, abstract, and ominous, describing a set of people and incidents derived largely from fragments of conversation and gossip gathered here and there. They are reminiscent of Raymond Roussel's characters amid his inimitable ersatz pastorals, with tableaux both innocent and grotesque. There is something ambiguous about these passages, something deliberately closed and dreamlike. Many of them read like primal scenes of private pathologies; others are memories that, many years later, retain their power to haunt.

Author: Gilbert Sorrentino
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 11/01/1991
Pages: 137
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.44lbs
Size: 8.46h x 5.51w x 0.46d
ISBN: 9780916583934

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/11/1993

About the Author

Gilbert Sorrentino was one of the founders (1956, together with Hubert Selby Jr.) and the editor (1956-1960) of the literary magazine "Neon," the editor for Kulchur (1961-1963), and an editor at Grove Press (1965-1970). Selby's?"Last Exit to Brooklyn"?(1964) and?"The Autobiography of Malcolm X"?are among his editorial projects. Later he took up positions at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, the University of Scranton and the New School for Social Research in New York and then was a professor of English at Stanford University (1982-1999). The novelists?Jeffrey Eugenides?and?Nicole Krauss?were among his students, and his son, Christopher Sorrentino, is the author of the novels?"Sound on Sound"?and?"Trance."