Red the Fiend - Paperback

by Gilbert Sorrentino (Author)

A recasting of Sorrentino's Aberration of Starlight, this is the story of how a child becomes a monster: of how Red the boy becomes Red the Fiend. With an absent father who turns up only to drunkenly berate his son, and a grandmother whose aggression crescendos to a daily beating, Red can only escape by turning his hatred outward, by being as cruel and bitter as his young life has been. Employing direct, elegant sentences, while retaining his characteristic formal inventiveness, Sorrentino evokes this unyieldingly grim Brooklyn boyhood, describing close, familial conflicts that deepen and widen to reflect the hardships of Depression-era life.

Author Biography

Gilbert Sorrentino was an American novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, professor, and editor. In over twenty-five works of fiction and poetry, Sorrentino explored the comic and formal possibilities of language and literature.