Christopher Sorrentino

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christopher Sorrentino (born May 20, 1963) is an American novelist and short story writer. His first published novel, Sound on Sound (1995), draws upon innovations pioneered in the work of his father, Gilbert Sorrentino, but also contains echoes of many other modernist and postmodernist writers, including Robert Coover, William Faulkner, William Gaddis, B. S. Johnson, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. A rigorously formal book, it is structured according to the format of a multitrack recording session, with corresponding section titles ("Secondary Percussion", "Vocals", "Playback", and so forth).

His second novel, Trance (2005), an epic fictional treatment of the Patty Hearst saga, used many of the same experimental techniques as Sound on Sound, but, according to Sorrentino, incorporated them more carefully and subtly into the text. The book was widely praised for its lush descriptions, riveting characterizations and dialogue, imaginative departures, and attention to period detail. Trance ended up on several reviewers' "best" lists, was named a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction, and was longlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

In 2006 New York magazine revealed that Sorrentino and Jonathan Lethem were the writers behind the pseudonymous Ivan Felt and Harris Conklin, authors of Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets, a "hyperliterary account of the Mets’ 2005 season" that was intended as "a playful poke at book-world scams."^[1]

Sorrentino's next book, American Tempura, a collaboration with artist Derek Boshier, was published by Nothing Moments Press in the fall of 2007. A novella, American Tempura is a satire about commercial moviemaking in Los Angeles.

Sorrentino currently lives in New York City, where he is an adjunct faculty member at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and at Columbia University School of the Arts.