Dennis Barone
AN INTERVIEW WITH GILBERT
SORRENTINO
Gilbert Sorrentino was born in Brooklyn, attended Brook–
lyn College, was drafted into the United States Army, and then
returned to Brooklyn College. He was Editor of
Neon
from 1956 to 1960
and he was Guest Editor of
Kulchur
#4. His first book,
The Darkness
Surrounds Us,
was published in 1960 by Jonathan Williams. His other
books include:
Black and White, Corrosive Sublimate, The Sky
Changes, Steelwork, Splendide-Hotel, Imaginative Qualities of Actual
Things, Flawless Play Restored: The Masque of Fungo, White Sail,
and
The Orangery.
Gilbert Sorrentino lives in Manhattan.
Dennis Barone:
Let's start with Pound-it wasn't just money that he
was talking about, but the city.
Gilbert Sorrentino:
Right. It's the curious permutations that money
forces art and the artist into. For instance, publishers are, by and
large, no longer the friends of artists, but have quite clearly set
themselves up as hostile to art-art is not salable. The very worst
houses are those that pretend an interest in good letters. Pound was
no economist, but he could see what was happening.
If
you live any
length of time in this society as an artist you become absolutely
intuitive about what's happening to you. You know exactly what
your value is. Your value is nothing, zero. You might as well not be
here. The longer you live as an artist, the poorer your value is, in
economic terms. You cannot make something that society can sell, so
down you go.
Barone:
I got the' sense that in the
Cantos
Pound thought that an artist
should be kind of like William Morris. You know, not only should
he paint and write poetry, but he should build furniture too.
Sorrentino:
Artists must confront the fact that they live in this particu–
lar world. They should use the very materials of this terrifying world
in order to make an art which replies to this world. You cannot make
the world any better for yourself or for anyone else by harking back
