SORRENTINO, GILBERT

born April 27, 1929, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. American poet and experimental novelist whose use of devices such as nonchronological structure illustrate his dictum that form not only determines content but form invents content. From 1956 to 1960 Sorrentino was editor and publisher of Neon, a magazine that featured works by Beat writers; he was also book editor (196165) for Kulchur. His poetry collections include The Darkness Surrounds Us (1960), The Perfect Fiction (1968), and The Orangery (1978). Among his avant-garde novels are The Sky Changes (1966), each chapter of which is named for a town the protagonists visit; Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971), a plotless, digressive satire of the New York art scene of the 1960s; Splendide-Htel (1973), a novelistic defense of poetry arranged in 26 alphabetical sections; Mulligan Stew (1979), considered by some critics to be the apotheosis of avant-garde fiction, a multilevel mlange of Joycean proportions that satirizes creativity; Odd Number (1985), which deals with unanswered questions; Rose Theatre (1987), each chapter of which is written in a different narrative style; Misterioso (1989), an exhaustive, alphabetical catalog of everything discussed in Odd Number and Rose Theatre; and Under the Shadow (1991), a series of 59 vignettes with recurring characters and images. Sorrentino's later works include Red the Fiend (1995) and Pack of Lies (1997).