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Steelwork
Like a series of snapshots, this novel presents a picture of a particular Brooklyn neighborhood between the years 1935 and 1951, covering the Depression, World War II, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the Korean War. In short, colorful, dramatic episodes, the book details the collapse of a basically decent, homogeneous, and honorable group of people into a greedy, ignorant, and slipshod conglomeration, corrupted by money made available by the war economy. The neighborhood as a whole is the protagonist, although there are many characters who become familiar. Moving the way memory does, the narrative skips from episode to episode in no conventional time sequence, projecting indelible flashes of the past as they strike the mind. Gilbert Sorrentino has beautifully encompassed a section of America in this very human, funny, intelligent novel which re-creates perfectly the mood and the time of its inhabitants and its past.
177 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
163 people want to read
About the author
Gilbert Sorrentino
45 books132 followersGilbert Sorrentino was one of the founders (1956, together with Hubert Selby Jr.) and the editor (1956-1960) of the literary magazine Neon, the editor for Kulchur (1961-1963), and an editor at Grove Press (1965-1970). Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X are among his editorial projects. Later he took up positions at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, the University of Scranton and the New School for Social Research in New York and then was a professor of English at Stanford University (1982-1999). The novelists Jeffrey Eugenides and Nicole Krauss were among his students, and his son, Christopher Sorrentino, is the author of the novels Sound on Sound and Trance.
Mulligan Stew is considered Sorrentino's masterpiece.
Obituary from The Guardian
Interview 2006
Mulligan Stew is considered Sorrentino's masterpiece.
Obituary from The Guardian
Interview 2006
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 13, 2016
Early Sorrentino (1970) - polyphonic Brooklyn, of course. Episodic, peppered with the literary experimentation and raw human satire we've all, each of us, come to know and love from Gil - rather fractured, carefully though, and still pretty damn good for a second novel in what turned out to be a long career full of great works. Not as brilliant and crucial as his later, more refined masterpieces - but hey, you can't build a Little Casino without first laying down the Steelwork... Read it. Read everything Sorrentino wrote!
December 28, 2016
Second reading of this episodic, observational series of unflinching snapshots. Steelwork is where Sorrentino’s unique comic voice comes to life, and his panache for capturing the perfect tone and mood of his childhood neighbourhood (1930s-1950s Brooklyn) arrives: a topic that would reappear in later novels Crystal Vision, Red the Fiend, Little Casino and others. As with most Sorrentino, a clever structural stratagem for arranging the content is used (here the technique is less clear: the sections leap between years and characters in a seemingly random order), and his ear for dialect, the brute machismo, and black humour of the working class rubes and losers is a pleasure to read. Some of the earthier chapters, such as ‘Sexology: 100 Facts’ (read by Bill Gass at a tribute for Sorrentino, and one of the master’s first sustained lists), and ‘The Great Pitch’, featuring a precursor to the hilarious The Arab character in Crystal Vision, are among the best. An idiosyncratic, witty and original novel.
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September 15, 2023my fav book changes often; often it's this one. holds up on the 499,999th read as i'm sure it will on the 500,000th. the title's sort of a key to everything that's going on here: when we talk about america as a "melting pot," or wwii "forging a superpower," there's a whole lotta violence implicit in those metaphors that sorrentino is hauling to the surface, white-hot. certain scenes (pat glade in the tub; the count of monte cristo's last stand) are lodged in my memory like things i experienced myself. the users alleging that little casino is better are absolutely tripping, however you should read that as well. and red the fiend. and aberration. and...
June 1, 2024
Formally inventive and beautifully written, arranged in striking fragments that defy chronology and embody different characters' points of view. Vivid portraits of working class people and the rituals and landscape of their insular NYC neighborhood in the 1930s and 40s.
"Steelwork" is most affecting about the traumas suffered by soldiers who served in WWII, unable to express the horrors to their friends and families who are unwilling to listen. Some similarities to Last Exit to Brooklyn, but without that book's thrumming heart. By the end, the misanthropy strikes the same note too many times, imprinting its dull clang above all else.
3.5
"Steelwork" is most affecting about the traumas suffered by soldiers who served in WWII, unable to express the horrors to their friends and families who are unwilling to listen. Some similarities to Last Exit to Brooklyn, but without that book's thrumming heart. By the end, the misanthropy strikes the same note too many times, imprinting its dull clang above all else.
3.5
March 9, 2013
Whether it was appropriate or not, I finished Steelwork at a rural Indiana high school's production of Grease this afternoon. The projection on the page mirrored the reflections on the elaborate stage, where wireless microphones and state of the art acoustics can't compensate for a dearth of talent. Grease looks ofr a good 50s, gender, race and class areedited out. Steelwork looks for the feral urges of a Brooklyn nieghborhood between 1939 and 1950.
Sorrentino's novel is Winesburg, Ohio refracted through the editing of Godard. The characters represent the perils of tribal living and the deprivations of the Depression and wartime. All seek release or acknowledgment. I wasn't entirely affected.
Sorrentino's novel is Winesburg, Ohio refracted through the editing of Godard. The characters represent the perils of tribal living and the deprivations of the Depression and wartime. All seek release or acknowledgment. I wasn't entirely affected.
September 21, 2023
this novel is a wonderful mix of experiment, artistry, and many of the mostly unspoken and down and dirty truths of everyday humanity. I'm not at all surprised to see (checking wikipedia to learn more about him) that Sorrentino labored over Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn MS to help him perfect it. This novel, if not inspired by that experience to write the truth of his own childhood neighborhood and war-time adolescence in Brooklyn, at least this novel is a close kin to that other absolute masterpiece. While Steelwork lacks some of the more traditional dramatic development of Last Exit... it also adds a looser, quite interesting snapshot structure, putting more onus on the reader to put it all together. But you don't really have to, or, well, just reading the snapshots does it for you. While we careen from moment to moment, character to character, back and forth across the years between 1935 and '51, we get the picture.
One thing, though--I really hated the blurb on the back for I saw little of the economic critique it seemed to want to forefront, and I couldn't get past the first line of the intro so condescending and dumb was it. Only Selby's short blurb had any sense to it. I've come to expect so much more from Dalkey Archive!
One thing, though--I really hated the blurb on the back for I saw little of the economic critique it seemed to want to forefront, and I couldn't get past the first line of the intro so condescending and dumb was it. Only Selby's short blurb had any sense to it. I've come to expect so much more from Dalkey Archive!
January 13, 2025
My favorite Sorrentino so far. His technique is so brilliant because it allows each book to build meaning and expand themes in a dozen directions at once, and each individual fragment works in a vacuum as a short story in its own right. Every time I read him it feels like a treat.
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August 25, 2025Very hopeless and desolate, just what I like! Horrible hopeless men and the endless belittling and abuse of women! It’s unbelievable and probably realistic … makes me nauseous though I must say 😁
January 17, 2019
Not nearly as good as little casino
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January 31, 2015a little hard to get into but a fascinating read along the way. the seemingly unconnected stories or monologues slowly build a story throughout the book. a lot of atmosphere, and a lot of brooklyn history in this. recommended.
May 19, 2017
I have long been an aficionado of the quasi-ontological high to be had when looking at footage of teeming urban environments shot on location for old movies; this intoxicating sense of having a magical (it is magical!) window into past worlds - perhaps fallen ones. There is something similar to this to be taken away from Sorrentino's beautiful and slightly sordid STEELWORK. This is a novel whose protagonist is the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn as it existed (in the mind and experience of Mr. Gilbert Sorrentino, native son) between the mid-thirties and early fifties. There are many characters that reappear here and there, but they are part of the tapestry rather than agents of narrative. Not only is the novel composed entirely of autonomous vignettes, but they are presented in achronological sequence, resembling memories retrieved willy-nilly from the aether. There is a measured hard-boiled poetics in the writing itself. It is unflinching and unpretty, but rendered w/ craft and considerable understated dexterity (it is no surprise that this is a novel by a writer also celebrated for his poetry). This is not wistful nostalgia. We are introduced to a decidedly hard-knocks world, often grim, full of what Sorrentino at one point calls "alcoholism and other social despairs." There is a quality of reportage at work here. It is a work which is saving a gone world. The book itself ends brilliantly w/ a reminder that urban spaces are ephemeral constructions when viewed from the perspective of the long game. A beautifully written elegy, and clearly one from the heart.
November 11, 2017
Reading Steelwork by Gilbert Sorrentino brought Richard Brautigan to mind. The chapters aren’t really chapters at all. They are more like entries from the diary of an urban neighborhood, short, pithy and poetic. They are presented achronologically, each with a title, most with a subtitle and a year designation from 1935 to1951. They are joyful, hopeful, sad, gritty, erotic, eccentric and some a bit disturbing. Sorrentino presents his world in a conversational style, often using phrases more than sentences and freely using dialects that reflect the multi-national backgrounds of its inhabitants. The characters of the entries are like the characters in our lives; they pop up here and there sometimes with regularity, sometime unexpectedly, often with some very creative nicknames. They are quirky, lovable, loathsome, pathetic, charismatic and real. The subject matter includes class distinction and conflicts, war, religion, sex, love and sex mistaken for love. All of this is presented with a great deal of irony, but it’s mostly a humorless irony that is stark and unromantic. Though stylistically worlds apart, Steelwork reflects Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land with an urban setting and the themes of class conscious, bigotry, poverty, belonging and isolation.
October 22, 2023
I'll give Sorrentino more chances, because I was taken with the big structural gambit of this - a non-chronological kaleidoscope of the experiences and emotions of people in a neighborhood in a city in a state in a nation in a world in a time in a...(etc.), but fuck me, what boring experiences, what unimaginably dull nostalgic realism (something I'm told Gil grows out of), what sex-obsessed unrelatable emotions. I admit, there's the occasional lovely passage (reminded me at times of DeLillo in interesting ways), but also contains what might be the single worst sentence I've ever read: "His boyish penis thrilled in its slight erection." No thanks!
August 15, 2015
Raw, that's the one word that comes to mind while reading about the interesting stew of characters that live in this tough Brooklyn neighborhood from 1935-1951. The stories are quick, each lasting at the most a couple of pages and at the minimum, two or three paragraphs. Imagine one of those great coming of age movies about the Big Apple in the 1960s, and just jump back a generation and move the locale to the gritty streets of Bay Ridge, you Steelwork.
April 6, 2017
A novel's structure is important, you can tell a story a number of different ways and it can make or break a novel. In this case Steelwork is told in series of snapshots with lots of characters held (so you never get to really know them) at arms length and it's nonlinear. I didn't like this book. It's the worst book I've this year so far. It was boring and I couldn't get into it or really care to try too, I just wanted it done so I could move on to other things.
abandoned
December 5, 2017I got bored when all the stories were about adolescent boy sexual experiences.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews