Up

by Ronald Sukenick

The author himself is the main character of this book, in which he glides undisturbed from present to future, from reality to fantasy. Sometimes he's an adolescent Brooklynite, at other times a part-time English teacher, a struggling writer living in a Lower East Side tenement, or a fantasist deftly moving in and out of numerous alter egos. **Lightning Print On Demand Title

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature, Humor

Paperback

First published March 12, 1968

About the author

Ronald Sukenick was an American writer and literary theorist.

Sukenick studied at Cornell University, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Wallace Stevens, at Brandeis University.

After Roland Barthes announced the "death of the author", Sukenick carried the metaphor even further in "the death of the novel". He drew up a list of what is missing: reality doesn't exist, nor time or personality. He was widely recognized as a controversial writer who, frequently humorously, questioned and rejected the conventions of traditional fiction-writing. In novels, short stories, literary criticism and history, he often used himself, family members or friends as characters, sometimes quoting them in tape-recorded conversations. He did stints as writer in residence at Cornell University, the University of California, Irvine, and Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. But his books were never best-sellers. Sukenick once commented that he had “only forty fans, but they’re all fanatics.”

He referred to his career as a university professor as his "day job". He taught at Brandeis University, Hofstra University, City College of the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College, Cornell University, the State University of New York (Buffalo), and l'Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France. His most prolonged teaching career was at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was professor of English from 1975-1999.

He was actively committed to publishing and promoting the writing of other unconventional writers. He was founder and publisher of American Book Review, and a founder of The Fiction Collective (now Fiction Collective Two). Sukenick was chairman of the Coordinating Council of Little magazines, and on the executive council of the Modern Language Association and the National Book Critics Circle.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ivory tower: what does it mean to be a resident in an ivory tower?

“Actually, in the long run, we're all comic characters. You can’t beat it. I did everything I could to screw up. I refused to study for a degree. I expressed my contempt for academe at every opportunity. I ignored my colleagues. I publicly attacked Whitebread Blackhead’s famous thesis on the fart in Chaucer. And finally, at the faculty-graduate seminar, in complete exasperation I attacked the profession as a resort for mean-spirited middle-class time servers. And what happens? Everybody eats it up. They love it. They call me a firebrand.”

One dreams some… One pretends some… One lives in one’s intellectual fantasies… And one tries desperately to sell oneself out to the world.

“All these years writing ad copy and I still haven’t learned how to sell myself. In modern life publicity is a central art – probably the central art. That’s why copywriting requires creative talent. I speak with heartbreaking sincerity. Advertising is a kind of poetry. It’s the perfect expression of popular desire, it discovers our heart’s profoundest images, and it creates a gratifying dream world whose power seduces the imagination.”

Up is an acrid social satire making first steps in postmodernism and it boasts a quite perceptible whiff of the beat subculture as well. Anxiety, strong desires to change the world, sexual revolution, psychotropic substances and tremendous artistic ambitions: the novel is fraught with the zeitgeist through and through…

“By the way, that show didn’t work out.”
“Too bad. How come?”
“I lost the paintings.”
“What do you mean you lost the paintings?”
“Well I was bringing them up to the guy see, and I left them on the sidewalk for a few minutes to pick up the car I’d borrowed.”
“They were stolen?”
“Well it seems the garbage men came around.”

A great many ivory tower dwellers turn out to be just frauds deceiving the others and themselves.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big ol’ sprawling, dated, artfucked, sloppy, preposterous, outright human mess of a book, and I wouldn’t change a goddamned word of it. Fantastic.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

UP.
Up.
up
uP
(p)up
cup
whad'up?
You Pee
I Pee
We All Pee for U.P.
Union Pacific
Upper Peninsula
Urinary (waitforit) Pee (!)
University of P.
tie me UP tie me
United Press
Up (yours)
Up (hup!hup!hup!)
Up
Unwary Pigeon
Uncle Pat
sup
'sup
sUPpose
uppe
eup (eup!eup!eup!)
üp
ūp
upo
you(P)
u pea
Ų́p
yUP
ᶙp
Up!!!!!!!
pU
pu-pu-pu-poo!
up(s)
UPs
uPs
up's
U(s)P(s)
yes U P us
wUPs

UP (y'up!)

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up is a postmodern novel from 1968, released the same year as Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, The Exagggerations of Peter Prince, and Lost in the Funhouse, and so at the forefront of that explosive movement that continues to titillate. As to be expected from Sukenick’s other fics, this novel is a Rabelaisian rave-up with blatant sexist content and a revue of autobiographical episodes reworked into comedic vignettes and dialogues, on occasion flirting with unpunctuated s-o-c drivel and typographical twists, building to a smashing self-reflexive climax that almost tops Katz’s superior novel of 1968. Amusing and flip.

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book--actually, most of FC2's output since the 70s, but this book especially--entirely changed my conception of what fiction could do.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Put in a few good jokes, a little satire, a typographical trick or two, and call it avant garde" (300).

Hailed in some places as the "first postmodern book," I was naturally excited to pick it up. And I liked it a lot. It reads a bit like Portnoy's Complaint if Portnoy were on LSD or something. The quick switches in chronologies and real vs. fantasy timelines, and then of course the meta bits, are all fun.

But you do get the notion that Sukenick's tackling big issues (re male Jewish American) under his comedy. It's a serious piece of lit. As one character says, "Are we children reading fairy tales or men trying to work out the essentials of our fate?" (223). Dramatic, but yes.

My favorite part is the kite scene. Everything works perfectly. If the whole book was writing like that, I'd give it 5 stars.

Recommended for people who stomp on bugs with their bare feet.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

The birds and the bees are touched on a lot by this author. He talks about getting his novel written and along the way takes advantage of women. Its kinda like one of those pornos with a plot, but a must read because who wants to watch those films

[Tye Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Thomas Pynchon's down-syndrome afflicted older brother.

[Andrew Sare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up is a constant attack of nastiness, sexism, absurdity, trickery, density and brilliant prose. Not so bloody of an experience as reading Kathy Acker, but still, as a reader you feel that you've narrowly escaped shots that might otherwise left you an accomplice to a literary rape or betrayal of your own morals. The characters are mostly all pretty lousy people, and plot? Who needs plot? Its great writing.

At the end a party is held for the character to celebrate the conclusion of the book! I've never seen that before. Various friends, family and colleagues are thanked, including unnamed good people in mostly American locales, with the exception of Nova Scotia. Does anyone know who or what Sukenick's Nova Scotian connection was?

[Geoffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, I found this mostly entertaining as far as it went, but I can't help feeling that the experimental noodling doesn't add up to anything in particular. Also, notwithstanding the fact that Sukenick is clearly in part sending up his own fixations, I can't help finding the book's sexual politics pretty distasteful.

[Devin Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that secretly builds to a wonderful little climax while deconstructing itself at every turn. Clearly aware of and unafraid of his own limitations Sukenick does occasionally go overboard, but finds ways to make it interesting and worthwhile throughout.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a fan of post - modernism,avant-pop auto fiction. It was interesting but mainly I wanted to finish.