SORRENTINO, Gilbert. Mulligan Stew. New York: Grove Press. 1979. Large 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s quarter black cloth over blue paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to the spine. Signed without dedication by the author to front endpaper. A near fine copy. The boards just very slightly marked, one corner gently rubbed. The binding tight and square, mild marks to textblock edges. The contents clean throughout, with some light and even toning throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($14.95) and fine but for some very mild crimping.
Sorrentino’s major work, a postmodern romp with metafictional nods and winks, mostly to the novel At Swim Two Birds, whose author Brian O’Nolan [Flann O’Brien] this book is dedicated to, and to Joyce’s Ulysses. Sorrentino was a classmate of Hubert Selby Jr. and helped him with the MS of Last Exit to Brooklyn. Interestingly, and quite uniquely, the book is prefaced by a wad of rejection letters printed on faux Xerox blue fax paper, parodying the genuine rejections the book received, rewritten somewhat by the author—I wish more books had the humility to do the same, though concede it might well double the length of some novels. It did, eventually, get a British edition by [who else but?] Marion Boyars.
SORRENTINO, Gilbert. Mulligan Stew. New York: Grove Press. 1979. Large 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s quarter black cloth over blue paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to the spine. Signed without dedication by the author to front endpaper. A near fine copy. The boards just very slightly marked, one corner gently rubbed. The binding tight and square, mild marks to textblock edges. The contents clean throughout, with some light and even toning throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($14.95) and fine but for some very mild crimping.
Sorrentino’s major work, a postmodern romp with metafictional nods and winks, mostly to the novel At Swim Two Birds, whose author Brian O’Nolan [Flann O’Brien] this book is dedicated to, and to Joyce’s Ulysses. Sorrentino was a classmate of Hubert Selby Jr. and helped him with the MS of Last Exit to Brooklyn. Interestingly, and quite uniquely, the book is prefaced by a wad of rejection letters printed on faux Xerox blue fax paper, parodying the genuine rejections the book received, rewritten somewhat by the author—I wish more books had the humility to do the same, though concede it might well double the length of some novels. It did, eventually, get a British edition by [who else but?] Marion Boyars.
