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Splendide-HôtelAuthor: Gilbert Sorrentino American Literature Series July 1984 64 pages, 5.5 x 8 Paperback, 9781564782786 / 9780916583002 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $9.56—20% OFF! 
Retail Hardcover Price: Our Hardcover Price: $9.60—20% OFF! Hardcover Temporarily Out of Stock |
Product Description
From A to Z, from Alpha to Omega, Splendide-Hôtel encompasses the natural movement and necessity of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet to grow into words which become phrases and sentences and paragraphs. Each of the twenty-six chapters becomes an opportunity for the author to expand on images suggested by each letter, as well as to reflect upon the workings of the imagination and the art of William Carlos Williams and Arthur Rimbaud.
Rimbaud's Splendide-Hôtel, in Sorrentino's hands, becomes a hostel and haven for the poet's memorable characters and images, a "Grand Hotel" of the mind, splendidly conceived.
About the Author
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Gilbert Sorrentino was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and entered Brooklyn College in 1950. It was at Brooklyn College that he made his first serious attempt at writing fiction. His college career, interrupted when he served in the US Army Medical Corps for two years, resumed at Brooklyn College in 1953 where he studied the classics. In 1956 he began Neon, a literary magazine for which he edited six issues. In the early '60s he was an editor and a contributor for Kulchur magazine and served as an editor for Grove Press from 1965-1970. He has published thirty books of fiction and poetry, including two novels that were finalists for the PEN / Faulkner award: Little Casino and Aberration of Starlight. A recipient of the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lannan Literary Award, and two Guggenheim Fellowships, he was a professor at Stanford University for many years. He died in 2006. |
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Praise
"Sorrentino can write with a wit that S.J. Perelman might envy . . . and with such sustained irony, seemingly effortless invention, and unfaltering verbal control. The result is prose of a rare deliciousness, but also a philosophy and critique of contemporary writing."—Washington Post Book World"Gilbert Sorrentino, who knows by poetic conviction that, 'Arthur Rimbaud was at the site of the construction when Splendide-Hôtel was built,' knows also all about the chaos of ice and of the polar night in which it was built. He knows the present hotel guests. He is critical, satirical and bitter with wit. He has 50/50 vision. He sees everything as it is and not astigmatically like politicians . . . Being a poet he is a realist. He has appropriated the alphabet and invented a literary device for himself."—Louise Varese, translator of Ribaud
"[Splendide-Hôtel] is so full of wit, sadness and delicious invention that the experience of reading it was like that of drinking the finest champagnes. It is rare and fine, and I'm grateful. I've been wandering in the halls of this building with that book in my hands, in order to bring it to the attention of any who might share my enjoyment. In the course of these peregrinations, I chanced on someone who informed me that Mr. Sorrentino lives right here, so now I'm hoping I may have an opportunity to meet him, and thank him for his book."—Alice S. Morris, former Literary Editor at Harper's Bazaar
More Information
Also by Gilbert Sorrentino:Aberration of Starlight
Blue Pastoral
Crystal Vision
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things
Misterioso
Mulligan Stew
Pack of Lies: A Trilogy
Red the Fiend
Rose Theatre
Something Said
Steelwork
The Sky Changes
Under the Shadow
"A tall man, dressed rather shabbily, was walking down the road." Thus, any story. The writer wishes to make his sense exact. A . . . what? "A dog came out of the bushes at the side of the road" (in South Newington, New Hampshire) "to confront the man and his wife, halfway to the roadside vegetable stand." The corn there sweet and luscious, kernels popped between the teeth, their sugary juice. It is this letter which serves so well, A. But don’t misunderstand me: I am not a "country" writer, although its peace is appealing to me.
The writer—a writer wishes to make his sense exact, or why bother? Precise registrations are beautiful, indeed. The popular novelist deals with feathery edges, one gets a "tone." One gets a "feeling." Then there are those who rhyme dialogue, subsidized assassins of the precise. The inane, the poets in constant residence. They demand of the poem that it adjust their very lives, they die fragmented at parties, turn out bands of students armed against ignorance with error. Error sharpened and ready for assault! Give them annual prizes, I beg you. Beware the interested academic. "A" young English instructor . . . ignorant, ignorant.
In New Hampshire, I dug 280 clams in Portsmouth Bay in 45 minutes. The earth’s plenty. My wife made a magnificent clam soup and we had four guests. The children played in the soft night among pines. I was a vacationer. The next day swam in the icy Atlantic, yet knew what I am. From this head—comes beauty. It is the artist who lives the nonartistic life who is most aware of his painfully absurd position. To keep one’s mouth shut. Who the hell does he think he is, anyway? One sees in the letter A a constant: and yet, a continuing rejuvenation.
A continuing rejuvenation? Of flies! Mouches eclatantes. The poet has it that this primal vowel is black. The great alpha, black A. "Black velvet coat of glittering flies." Black, black. The A, sitting quietly on the page, wings folded back over the shining body. A, a fly. AA, two flies. "It is true that most of them breed in decaying organic matter of some kind, but we must remember that disgust is purely a human reaction."
In New Hampshire, a genus of biting fly (Chrysops) was so persistent that it would stay on the flesh until the exact moment one sank beneath the water, and sometimes even went under in its ravenous feeding. In this sentence, eleven instances of sudden blackness. Eleven flies.
- A A
A AA A
A
A A
A A
To keep one’s mouth shut, or, opening it, to see the language in air, inexact somehow. Talking to the young English instructor in his Maryland farmhouse: he is a member of some audience unsuspected, yet he does not understand this language. In the bright kitchen, the following morning, with grapefruit and coffee on the table, I felt an exile, somehow totally out of whatever world I live in, fuzzy and—inexact. On the bookcase, a fly. In the mind, A. Darkness, darkness. Later, another poet would ask me if I had ever met John Crowe Ransom. Poets together. Yet my poets—their secret lines speak to me. A poet. A poet. English instructors and their wives. Depressed.
At such times, one throws up a hasty wall of wit and anecdote, behind which the heart can hide. From its retreat, it listens to the spectacular hyperbole rumbling above it. I board the train for home and am again at the beginning. The fields and towns go by, the soured Jersey flats finally. A.