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Last Fall
On September 11, 2001 Ronald Sukenick was in his Battery Park studio working on a novel about the American "Museum of Temporary Art" when he looked out his window and saw the first of the jets strike the World Trade Center. He then proceeded to reconceive the novel, now entitled Last Fall, having grasped that the "Museum of Temporary Art" was America itself, and its icon the World Trade Center. In Last Fall an older generation of artists, intellectuals, and arts professionals investigate an art theft, "something missing" from the Museum, but the transience of the collections makes it impossible to identify what's gone. Recovering the work means exposing the secret of the Museum's creation, a conspiracy of the "why" chromosome transforming all the suspects into an American family.
210 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
14 people want to read
About the author
Ronald Sukenick
32 books32 followersRonald 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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March 18, 2018This my eighth Sukenick?[!] And I still don't really quite know what to make of him. To quote Gore on Zappa though I'm sure he's "an american orginal" no doubt. This one pub'd posthumously. His last novel so to say. And this one too I couldn't/didn't quite latch onto here's why (maybe) : he'd been working on this novel of the art world and it didn't get nowhere. Then planes hit towers. Something clicked for him and the novel fell together. For me it didn't. See (and I won't get into this) 9/11 grants no emotional hold upon me, narratively. I won't get into why (Giuliani might shout me down). So then I have a few more Sukenicks to knock out for Completionismus.
January 21, 2018
First Sukenick for me, inspired by recent FC2 dabbling. Oh am I grateful for their existence!
A very enjoyable read. Full of quotable quotes. Can definitely sense this guy’s style - comedic, outlandish, excessive, limit pushing, dense, yet poignant. Given my general lack of knowledge regarding these boundary pushing works, I’ll just offer a few humble impressions...
The characters seem to be driven by some form of excess, which leaves them highly vulnerable to collapse, resonating with things on a much grander scale. Thus we find everyone perfectly pivoted around the Twin Tower attacks. And hence this was a compelling read, furthermore considering the context of Sukenick’s life when he wrote this, very shortly before his death. A character is called Hymi, which after reading R.M Barry’s piece below, seems to be painfully significant, “hi me!”
Some context by R.M Barry
http://goldenhandcuffsreview.com/gh4c...
Only thing I could find about this on the net. The blurb on GR sounds very interesting
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=...
“This chapter will discuss Sukenick’s novel within the framework of American postmodern metafiction, its ironic disruption of the modernist thematically of the city, and the extent to which the 9/11 terrorist attacks entailed a turning point, or rather, a consolidation of American metafiction’s critique of the modes of literary representation. I will explore Sukenick’s ironic revisiting of the cityscape in Last Fall through the dual critical dimensions it; its radical problematizing of the urban thematics and aesthetics through its metafictional interrogation of literary representation, and its rethinking of postmodern conceptions of the city in the wake of the terrorist attacks. The narrative from and the literary mode adopted in the Last Fall constitute a significant structural apparatus that grounds much of the novel’s stylistic and rhetorical games and implications. Indeed, the pseudo or counter-detective form and the parodic mode through which Sukenick’s articulated a destructive, nihilistic version of “flanerie” entail a reinvention of the cityscape thematic within an imaginative structure that exploits the symbolic significance of the highly visual and mediated event of 9/11.
My main argument is that Suckenick’s revision of the poetics of postmodern metafiction encompasses a network of related themes that revolve around the fate and value or art in the aftermath of 9/11.”
A very enjoyable read. Full of quotable quotes. Can definitely sense this guy’s style - comedic, outlandish, excessive, limit pushing, dense, yet poignant. Given my general lack of knowledge regarding these boundary pushing works, I’ll just offer a few humble impressions...
The characters seem to be driven by some form of excess, which leaves them highly vulnerable to collapse, resonating with things on a much grander scale. Thus we find everyone perfectly pivoted around the Twin Tower attacks. And hence this was a compelling read, furthermore considering the context of Sukenick’s life when he wrote this, very shortly before his death. A character is called Hymi, which after reading R.M Barry’s piece below, seems to be painfully significant, “hi me!”
Some context by R.M Barry
http://goldenhandcuffsreview.com/gh4c...
Only thing I could find about this on the net. The blurb on GR sounds very interesting
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=...
“This chapter will discuss Sukenick’s novel within the framework of American postmodern metafiction, its ironic disruption of the modernist thematically of the city, and the extent to which the 9/11 terrorist attacks entailed a turning point, or rather, a consolidation of American metafiction’s critique of the modes of literary representation. I will explore Sukenick’s ironic revisiting of the cityscape in Last Fall through the dual critical dimensions it; its radical problematizing of the urban thematics and aesthetics through its metafictional interrogation of literary representation, and its rethinking of postmodern conceptions of the city in the wake of the terrorist attacks. The narrative from and the literary mode adopted in the Last Fall constitute a significant structural apparatus that grounds much of the novel’s stylistic and rhetorical games and implications. Indeed, the pseudo or counter-detective form and the parodic mode through which Sukenick’s articulated a destructive, nihilistic version of “flanerie” entail a reinvention of the cityscape thematic within an imaginative structure that exploits the symbolic significance of the highly visual and mediated event of 9/11.
My main argument is that Suckenick’s revision of the poetics of postmodern metafiction encompasses a network of related themes that revolve around the fate and value or art in the aftermath of 9/11.”
January 19, 2009
No artist has squeezed as much sorrow and play from both 9/11 and the commodification of art since Warhol. Rest in peace, Mr. Suckenick.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews