Christopher Sorrentino

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Christopher Sorrentino (born May 20, 1963) is an American novelist and short story writer of Puerto Rican descent. He is the son of novelist Gilbert Sorrentino and Victoria Ortiz. His first published novel, Sound on Sound (1995), draws upon innovations pioneered in the work of his father, but also contains echoes of many other modernist and postmodernist writers. The book 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 2009, Trance was named one of the "61 Essential Postmodern Reads" by the Los Angeles Times.[1]

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."[2]

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. Death Wish, a monograph on the 1974 film of the same name, was published in the fall of 2010 by Soft Skull Press as one of the inaugural entries in its Deep Focus series of film books.

Sorrentino's work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Esquire, Harper's, Playboy, Granta, McSweeney's, Tin House, Open City, Bookforum, Conjunctions, and many others.

Sorrentino has taught at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and at Columbia University School of the Arts, and is a member of the faculty at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y. He was the visiting writer at Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2010-2011. He currently lives in New York City with his partner, the writer and editor Minna Proctor, and their children.

Works

Fiction

  • Sound on Sound (1995)
  • Trance (2005)
  • Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets (2006), with Jonathan Lethem (as "Ivan Felt" and "Harris Conklin")
  • American Tempura (2006)

Nonfiction

  • Death Wish (2010)

Contributions to Books and Anthologies

  • "The Pride of Life," They’re at It Again: An Open City Reader, edited by Thomas Beller and Joanna Yas, New York: Open City Books, 2011
  • “Death in the Age of Digital Proliferation, and Other Considerations,” The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, Ed. David Shields and Bradford Morrow, New York: WW Norton, 2011
  • “When He Was Seventeen,” More New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of the New York Times, Ed. Constance Rosenblum, New York: NYU Press, 2010
  • “Dave Kingman,” Top of the Order: 25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player, Ed. Sean Manning, New York: Da Capo, 2010
  • Introduction to The Abyss of Human Illusion, by Gilbert Sorrentino, Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2010
  • “Misapprehensions,” A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years, Ed. Rebecca Wolff, Albany, NY: Fence Books, 2009
  • “Julie Halo,” New Standards, Ed. Jason Snyder, San Francisco: Fourteen Hills Press, 2005
  • “Organism,” The Future Dictionary of America, Ed. Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave Eggers, and Nicole Krauss, San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2004
  • “The Ger Sheker,” Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers: Writers on Comics, ed. Sean Howe, New York: Pantheon Books, 2004

External links

References

  1. ↑ Kellogg, Carolyn (16 July 2009). "61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2013-08-22. 
  2. ↑ ""Lit Non-Hoax Revealed: Pseudonyms don’t move units" by Geoffrey Gray". New York. July 17, 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-02. 
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