Edited by his son Christopher Sorrentino, this is Gilbert Sorrentino's final novel, completed just before his death in 2006. As Christopher writes, "Among his last words to me, when I visited him in the hospital the night before he died, were, `I'm sick of this bullshit.'" And it's no wonder. Sorrentino spent his whole career fighting the bullshit that had crept into American writing. Along the way he gathered some enemies (his obituary in the New York Times quoted at length from a ancient critical attack), but he is still a hero to many writers and readers. As the San Francisco Chronicle says, ""Of the elder generation of postmodernists, only Thomas Pynchon and Sorrentino remain truly dangerous." And as Bookforum assserts, "One of [Brooklyn]'s most intriguing and authentic homegrown talents, Sorrentino's Bay Ridge deserves to be appreciated alongside Malamud's Crown Heights, Arthur Miller's Coney Island, Henry Miller's and Betty Smith's Williamsburg, Hamill's and Auster's Park Slope, and Lethem's Boerum Hill." In this novel, Sorrentino again proves that there is no place like the Brooklyn of his imagination-a city lost in time between the Depression era and some fraudulent bohemia of the present. Familiar, caustically funny, and cathartic, all his usual characters are here, too, including some we've met in previous books-aging artists, miserable couples, crackerjack salesmen, drunken soldiers, tyrannical white-collar supervisors, and avariciously stupid book reviewers.

Deep Focus is a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history: midnight movies, the New Hollywood of the sixties and seventies, film noir, screwball comedies, international cult classics, and more. Passionate and idiosyncratic, each volume of Deep Focus is long-form criticism that's relentlessly provocative and entertaining. Christopher Sorrentino's examination of Death Wish is the second entry in the series. The fourth collaboration between director Michael Winner and actor Charles Bronson, Death Wish was the apotheosis of a succession of films hitting screens during the seventies--including Bullitt, Dirty Harry, and Walking Tall--that tacked against a prevailing liberal wind in Hollywood cinema. Exploiting audience fears of a bestial "other" infesting American cities, and explicitly linking law and order with a pastoral ideal of the Old West (and exurban subdivisions), its glib endorsement of vigilantism infuriated liberal critics even as it filled theaters with cheering audiences. Sorrentino examines Death Wish in its various contexts--as movie, as provocation, as social commentary, as political tautology, and as depiction of urban life--and considers its lasting influence on cinema.

 National Book Award FinalistA "Los Angeles Times Book Review" Favorite Book of the Year
A "Publishers Weekly "Top Ten Novel of the Year It is 1974 and a tiny band of self-styled urban guerrillas, calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), abducts a newspaper heiress, who then takes the guerrilla name"Tania" and shocks the world by choosing to remain with her former captors. Soon most of the SLA are dead, killed in a suicidal confrontation with police in Los Angeles, forcing Tania and her two remaining comrades--the pompous and abusive General Teko and his duplicitous lieutenant, Yolanda--into hiding, where they will remain for the next sixteen months. These are the months of Tania's sentimental education.