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Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things

File:Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities, cover.jpg Cover of the 1st edition
Author	Gilbert Sorrentino
Language	English
Genre	Metafiction
Publisher	Pantheon Books
Publication date	1971
Media type	Print (Hardback)

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things is Gilbert Sorrentino's third novel. The novel was noted for its metafictional antinovelistic construction, and for its savage, sarcastic treatment of incompetent, artsy dilettantes. Reviewers and critics have been divided, tending to either view the novel as an overwrought spleen-venting flop on the one hand, or else as a brilliant black humor reinvention of the novel on the other hand.

The metafictional aspect of the novel was extended to the dust jacket in the first edition. The cover artwork looks like data for the bindery, complete with a publisher approval stamp.

The title

The title is taken from William Carlos Williams, which Sorrentino quotes:

In the mind there is a continual play of obscure images which coming between the eyes and their prey seem pictures on the screen at the movies. Somewhere there appears to be a mal-adjustment. The wish would be to see not floating visions of unknown purport but the imaginative qualities of the actual things being perceived accompany their gross vision in a slow dance, interpreting as they go. But inasmuch as this will not always be the case one must dance nevertheless as he can.

Tyrus Miller explains the significance of this quotation for Sorrentino as follows. To a romantic poet like Yeats, form and content must merge, the dancer becomes the dance. Williams rejects this, and says we must imitate the dance anyway, and this is the artwork of his poetry. Sorrentino not only agrees with Williams, but wishes to illustrate Williams' philosophy explicitly.

Chapter and character summary

There is no plot, nothing even resembling a plot. Instead, there are eight official main characters, each of whom gets one primary chapter, in which the narrator, making clear that he is writing fiction, describes his current version of each character along with past incidents, but deprecated by frequent reference to the character's mere textual existence, subject to seemingly arbitrary modification and giving readers permission to believe or disbelieve what they want. But the narrator is as metafictional a construct as the characters, himself subject to editorial mockery.

Most of the characters reappear in several of Sorrentino's later novels.

1. Lady the Brach: Sheila Henry

From King Lear: "Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady, the brach, may stand by th' fire and stink." (I, iv, 110 - 112), spoken by Lear's fool. "Brach" is an obsolete word for a female dog. The context is of the Fool mocking Lear for restricting his honest daughter Cordelia, while rewarding his two conniving daughters Goneril and Regan.

1. Brooklyn-Paterson Local: Lou Henry

The "Brooklyn-Paterson local" referred to in the chapter title, while sounding like a train line, is a reference to Brooklynites who read the poetry of William Carlos Williams, especially Paterson.

1. The Butcher Cut Him Down: Guy Lewis

'Til the Butcher Cuts Him Down was the name for a 1971 television documentary on the life of the jazz musician Punch Miller.

1. And Other Popular Songs: Bunny Lewis
2. Images of K: Leo Kaufman
3. Radix Malorum: Anton Harley

From the Vulgate, Radix malorum est cupiditas. Accurately translated as "the root of evils", but universally recognized as "the root of all evil".

Anton is noted for his outrageous greed, essentially being an archetype. One particular incident, for example, involves eating and sexually abusing a pizza while his date is locked in the bathroom—Anton does not share.

1. Many Years a Painter: Bart Kahane
2. Amethyst Neon: Dick Detective

Controversies

The novel paints a very negative picture of the Greenwich Village artsy crowd familiar with in the 1960s, treating them as mostly incompetent hacks, even those with talent are ultimately just sell outs, and brazen with their wildly dishonest sexual mores. Most readers assumed the novel was a roman à clef, including some long-time friends of Sorrentino who saw themselves in the book and broke off all relations with Sorrentino afterwards.

Reception

Imaginative Quality of Actual Things is a first-rate novel that redeems Gilbert Sorrentino's promise as a seriocomic writer

— ?, Antioch Review 31.3 (Fall 1971)

Imaginative Quality of Actual Things is not a fictional recreation of a real time and place but a savant hip parody, an antinovel full of lists and author interpolations

— ?, Kirkus Reviews 39 (8/15/1971)

Imaginative Quality of Actual Things is a perceptively funny book that does a job on the dilettantish losers of the hip art community. Sorrentino's zany manipulation of language and footnotes softens the satire and makes his bitterness bearable.

— Ed Powers, Cleveland Press, 11/26/1971

Imaginative Quality of Actual Things channel's Gilbert Sorrentino's hatred for New York publishers into a striking novelistic innovation. Though Sorrentino despises conventional narrative art, his non-illusionistic focus on words ironically succeeds in producing brilliantly conceived characters.

— Jerome Klinkowitz, Village Voice Literary Supplement, 11/22/1973, reprinted in Klinkowitz The Life of Fiction (University of Illinois Press, 1977)

Further reading

• "Table of Contents". The Review of Contemporary Fiction. XXIII (1). Spring 2003.