Books like Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino
Mulligan Stew explores the comic possibilities of modern literary imagination through the misadventures of avant‑garde novelist Antony Lamont. While trying to craft a new‑wave murder mystery, his emotional and sexual turbulence disrupts the narrative, causing the text itself to devolve into a chaotic collage of journal entries, erotic poems, parody sketches, love letters, interviews, and lists. The novel’s own characters—borrowed from figures such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flann O’Brien, James Joyce, and Dashiell Hammett—gain independent agency and playfully sabotage Lamont’s story, making the book a self‑referential, humorous meditation on authorship and the creative process.
First publish date: 1979
Genre: Literary Fiction/Experimental Fiction
Authors: Gilbert Sorrentino
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