Crystal Vision

By Gilbert Sorrentino

Book Overview

Both comic and haunting, ?"Crystal Vision"?invokes the world of magic and the arcane as filtered through a group of characters gathered on the streets and in the stores of their Brooklyn neighborhood to gossip, insult, lust, brag, and argue. In a series of seventy-eight short narratives, Gilbert Sorrentino perfectly captures the speech, illusions, and confusion of The Magician, Ritchie, The Arab, Irish Billy, Big Duck, Doc Friday, Fat Frankie, and many others. Through formal inventiveness, Sorrentino liberates these characters from the confines of realism and gives us their world--zany, vulgar, hilarious, and exuberant.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564781593
• ISBN13: 9781564781598
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

brilliant and hilarious

how the previous reviewer could give this book one star...oh, never mind. Crystal Vision is as good as Sorrentino's other novels, especially Mulligan Stew, Steelwork, and Imaginative Qualities. Wildly inventive, comic, and deeply depressing all at once, Sorrentino's novel is a masterpiece in the American idiom. Sorrentino's ear for American speech is as good as a great jazz musician's.