The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Gold Fools by Gilbert SorrentinoDave Andrews
Gilbert Sorrentino. Gold Fools. Green Integer, 2001. 368 pp. Paper: $14.95.
Sorrentino’s long-awaited follow-up to Red the Fiend is a fond and wildly comic burlesque of a 1924 boys’ adventure book. Though Gold Fools consists entirely of interrogative sentences, the plot is surprisingly clear. As is typical of the author, however, the point is language rather than plot. Framed in the clichéd locutions of “the Old West” of both popular and literary culture, each question allows Sorrentino to question the very meaning and etymology of its component words and phrases. Naturally, this moves author and reader further and further from the plot’s central cliché: a quest for gold in the Gila Desert (which is as dry, sort of, as the characters’ laconic speech). As the adventure progresses the author ratchets the comedy of cliché ever higher by mixing in pat phrases culled from a variety of contemporary sources, particularly academia and the media, generating a brilliant gibberish, that highlights the humorous emptiness of ordinary speech as observed in “all walks of life.” Among Sorrentino’s other works, Gold Fools most resembles Blue Pastoral, another playful quest-novel centrally concerned with cliché. And like Blue Pastoral, Gold Fools has a clear place in the Sorrentino canon. Not only does it grind, albeit interrogatively, all the usual axes, it also incorporates many of his central themes and motifs—though it does not include the recurring characters such as Sheila Henry that enliven many of his fictions. In sum, Gold Fools is a great artistic achievement, a smart and enjoyable read, and a promising indicator of Sorrentino works to come. [Dave Andrews]