I've only read one road-trip book before. Quirky, girl-gets-over-old-love, meets-new-love, feel-good but-not-too-good, lots of asides about those bits of the US y'all laugh at. Not my cup of tea, though it sold lots of copies and it won't surprise me if the movie version pops up on your (sic) netflix menu.

I didn't realise, when I opened this that it was a road-trip novel. For a start, it takes some pages to figure out what's going on. And I found the poetry of it stopped any flow. It has an Under Milkwood beguiling sense that it should be read aloud. I would read a couple of pages and then go back and read it aloud in my head. Maybe half way through the book I stopped doing that, and I'm not sure if that was just taking for granted what earlier distracted me, or if the style of writing somewhat changes. I should note that I read the 1986 edition, a revision of the 1966 edition, itself the author's first novel.

Feel good (but not too good), girly lit this is not. I'm not surprised to see that he takes on the mantle and the cause of William Carlos Williams: the similarities are obvious. For more on Sorrentino's work and his relationship with WCW, see Ken Bolton's article in Jacket Magazine.

It you read Sorrentino's wiki page, you are immediately hit by 'post-modernist' and 'meta-fiction' and that makes you go to goodreads with a sneaking feeling....yes, the only one of your friends to have reviewed this is MJ. Fortunately I only did this after finishing the book. Post-modern? Meta-fiction? Absolutely not - and perhaps that's why MJ excoriated it after his first reading. It's just a straightforward tale of the breakdown of social relations at a time we now remember fondly for the social devastation wreaked. I wonder if you needed to be closer in generation to that period in order to feel the heat of this book? Sorrentino muses on the nature of memory. I love this:

If they hadn't built that fucking house we would have stayed, he thought, we would have stayed and everything would have been OK. What he meant by OK was that everything would have remained in its long-ago attained state of rot, but it would have been submerged rot. He needed, however, the monumentally trite fable of the good old days to avoid their drab truth, in his heart he suspected, even, that the time would come when he would speak, and perhaps even think, of this trip as fun, as adventure, this very moment would become part of the good old days.

This book is incredibly dense, it's short but has so much in it. His inept relationship with his kids, the false nature of friendship. The pissing away of life - through alcohol in particular - that was integral to the scene he is part of. The changing geography and social fabric of the America they pass through as they head from NY to Mexico. The North South divide. Lying and denial as the basis of relationships. It's quite misleading to talk of this as a book about divorce. It is about relationships of all sorts and their fraught, dishonest bases.

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2018/12/16/the-sky-changes-by-gilber... ( )

I've only read one road-trip book before. Quirky, girl-gets-over-old-love, meets-new-love, feel-good but-not-too-good, lots of asides about those bits of the US y'all laugh at. Not my cup of tea, though it sold lots of copies and it won't surprise me if the movie version pops up on your (sic) netflix menu.

I didn't realise, when I opened this that it was a road-trip novel. For a start, it takes some pages to figure out what's going on. And I found the poetry of it stopped any flow. It has an Under Milkwood beguiling sense that it should be read aloud. I would read a couple of pages and then go back and read it aloud in my head. Maybe half way through the book I stopped doing that, and I'm not sure if that was just taking for granted what earlier distracted me, or if the style of writing somewhat changes. I should note that I read the 1986 edition, a revision of the 1966 edition, itself the author's first novel.

Feel good (but not too good), girly lit this is not. I'm not surprised to see that he takes on the mantle and the cause of William Carlos Williams: the similarities are obvious. For more on Sorrentino's work and his relationship with WCW, see Ken Bolton's article in Jacket Magazine.

It you read Sorrentino's wiki page, you are immediately hit by 'post-modernist' and 'meta-fiction' and that makes you go to goodreads with a sneaking feeling....yes, the only one of your friends to have reviewed this is MJ. Fortunately I only did this after finishing the book. Post-modern? Meta-fiction? Absolutely not - and perhaps that's why MJ excoriated it after his first reading. It's just a straightforward tale of the breakdown of social relations at a time we now remember fondly for the social devastation wreaked. I wonder if you needed to be closer in generation to that period in order to feel the heat of this book? Sorrentino muses on the nature of memory. I love this:

If they hadn't built that fucking house we would have stayed, he thought, we would have stayed and everything would have been OK. What he meant by OK was that everything would have remained in its long-ago attained state of rot, but it would have been submerged rot. He needed, however, the monumentally trite fable of the good old days to avoid their drab truth, in his heart he suspected, even, that the time would come when he would speak, and perhaps even think, of this trip as fun, as adventure, this very moment would become part of the good old days.

This book is incredibly dense, it's short but has so much in it. His inept relationship with his kids, the false nature of friendship. The pissing away of life - through alcohol in particular - that was integral to the scene he is part of. The changing geography and social fabric of the America they pass through as they head from NY to Mexico. The North South divide. Lying and denial as the basis of relationships. It's quite misleading to talk of this as a book about divorce. It is about relationships of all sorts and their fraught, dishonest bases.

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2018/12/16/the-sky-changes-by-gilber... ( )

I've only read one road-trip book before. Quirky, girl-gets-over-old-love, meets-new-love, feel-good but-not-too-good, lots of asides about those bits of the US y'all laugh at. Not my cup of tea, though it sold lots of copies and it won't surprise me if the movie version pops up on your (sic) netflix menu.

I didn't realise, when I opened this that it was a road-trip novel. For a start, it takes some pages to figure out what's going on. And I found the poetry of it stopped any flow. It has an Under Milkwood beguiling sense that it should be read aloud. I would read a couple of pages and then go back and read it aloud in my head. Maybe half way through the book I stopped doing that, and I'm not sure if that was just taking for granted what earlier distracted me, or if the style of writing somewhat changes. I should note that I read the 1986 edition, a revision of the 1966 edition, itself the author's first novel.

Feel good (but not too good), girly lit this is not. I'm not surprised to see that he takes on the mantle and the cause of William Carlos Williams: the similarities are obvious. For more on Sorrentino's work and his relationship with WCW, see Ken Bolton's article in Jacket Magazine.

It you read Sorrentino's wiki page, you are immediately hit by 'post-modernist' and 'meta-fiction' and that makes you go to goodreads with a sneaking feeling....yes, the only one of your friends to have reviewed this is MJ. Fortunately I only did this after finishing the book. Post-modern? Meta-fiction? Absolutely not - and perhaps that's why MJ excoriated it after his first reading. It's just a straightforward tale of the breakdown of social relations at a time we now remember fondly for the social devastation wreaked. I wonder if you needed to be closer in generation to that period in order to feel the heat of this book? Sorrentino muses on the nature of memory. I love this:

If they hadn't built that fucking house we would have stayed, he thought, we would have stayed and everything would have been OK. What he meant by OK was that everything would have remained in its long-ago attained state of rot, but it would have been submerged rot. He needed, however, the monumentally trite fable of the good old days to avoid their drab truth, in his heart he suspected, even, that the time would come when he would speak, and perhaps even think, of this trip as fun, as adventure, this very moment would become part of the good old days.

This book is incredibly dense, it's short but has so much in it. His inept relationship with his kids, the false nature of friendship. The pissing away of life - through alcohol in particular - that was integral to the scene he is part of. The changing geography and social fabric of the America they pass through as they head from NY to Mexico. The North South divide. Lying and denial as the basis of relationships. It's quite misleading to talk of this as a book about divorce. It is about relationships of all sorts and their fraught, dishonest bases.

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2018/12/16/the-sky-changes-by-gilber... ( )

Intimate observation of the excruciating decay of a romantic relationship is near impossible unless one is a party to said relationship. For those craving insight without the actual experience, there is this book to consider. The unnamed narrator, in third person limited POV, drags the reader through a mechanistic deconstruction of the male brain (one instance of it, at least) as it processes the slow motion failure of marriage.

The couple and their two children, accompanied by the husband's friend (known only as 'the driver') are traveling across the United States toward Mexico, where they intend to live for a year or so, in part as a final effort to save the marriage. The husband's mother has recently died, leaving him with a significant inheritance, enough to bankroll the trip and then some. Along the way, the group spends time with various acquaintances and family members. With the exception of the husband, most characters are either flat or gauzy, lacking in fixed detail and instead reflective of whatever passing feelings the husband projects onto them. Even the husband can be hard to pin down. His main characteristics are passivity and an intermittent sleaziness, as he is prone to getting drunk and pursuing whatever woman is close at hand, often with his wife nearby.

The story is told in alternating flashbacks, flash-forwards, and shifting present moments, chopped up into geographic chunks. The husband's present disillusionment is juxtaposed with his past youthful idealism and simplistic views of love and relationships. He feels guilt over his children and rage alternating with lust and futility toward his wife. His over-thinking of events and motivations in place of effective communication with his wife leads to assumptions that further corrode their relationship. He wants to make it work at times (though not obvious through his actions), while at other times he is looking forward to its ultimate destruction. Parallel to this exists his sensitivity to place, in perpetual flux as it is during the trip and acting on this insular New Yorker as either mood stimulant or depressant. Middle America impales him with its winter bleakness, while parts of the lush South open him to the possibilities of redemption, however illusory they may be.

So he smoked on, and gazed at the house across the street, mistaking the peace that this old city gave him with a peace that he could only have made solid through his own manufacture, his own mind.

This was Sorrentino's first novel and he revised it 20 years later for the Dalkey edition. I hadn't realized this until I started reading it about a month after I picked it up. Generally I'm skeptical of such writerly practice because I believe it can disturb the integrity of the original text, especially in a case like this where a first novel gets reconsidered 20 years later. I have to wonder at the motivation, especially given Sorrentino's claim that "it is not my practice to revise previously published writings." The book was free, though, so I will cease complaint. (2.5/5) ( )