The simplest example: you read, say, Catcher in the Rye, which you obviously should. And it’s in first person, from the mind of good ol’ Holden Caulfield. Usually when people read the book they’re sort of young, themselves, and so it’s easy to step into the role of a late-teenager, with all his angst and frustration and simmering. But then again, he’s a boy. Is it a problem? I don’t know, is the fact that he’s in New York a problem? What if you’re a girl? What if you’ve never been to New York? Oh shit, what are we to do?

We trust. We say to ourselves “Self, Mr. Salinger, though largely absent from day to day life, is a smart man, and this book has been a big deal for a long time, and so maybe I should just trust that, despite the differences between Holden and myself, I’ll understand the story. Maybe, even, the difference in background will give me a new way of seeing some things—that crazy boy down the street who mopes around with rainbow hair, listening to that loud music.”

Okay, now, take all of those thoughts and focus them on Gilbert Sorrentino. He, too, is from New York. He, too, is a very very smart man. He has some obscenely big deal books, but, alas, in the very crowded and small world of sort of high brow literature (if you’re curious, his biggest deal book is one called Mulligan Stew, which I’d love to be able to recommend but can’t because I haven’t read it). He also has a new book, called Little Casino, out from Coffeehouse Press.

First thing to keep in mind while reading this book: laugh. The book is a scream, absolutely. Equally important but, by default, second on the list (although it’ll hit you before the humor does): trust this book. Trust the story implicitly, even though—even despite—the fact that the story is pushing you away from the sort of glad-handing you typically are offered in books.

The main narrative, the section that begins each of the 40+ chapters in the book, is a rough sort of coming of age story. You meet a young man, listen/watch as he sort of bumbles along through adolescence, as he finds sex and love, as he finds a life and wife and job—as he becomes himself, essentially. Okay, so that’s the main narrative.

The other narrative is what ends each of the chapters of the book (it’s differentiated by a change in font, don’t worry). The tone is what’ll knock you down first—a switch from third person to what’s really a second person without leaning too heavily on any notion of a ‘you’. This narrative is, essentially, a sort of counterpointed narration of what’s just been described in the first half of the chapter.

So, wait a second, that’s sort of like Nabokov’s Pale Fire, or Boswell’s Samuel Johnson, right? Well, sort of. Although instead of these sneezy, worshipful commentary, the commentator in Casino is less enamored of the character as, seemingly, fascinated by him. And, macrocosmically, fascinated by how people grow up, how time changes, how people deceive themselves, etc. Couple with that the fact that the commentator will quite candidly point out holes in the first half of the narrative in each chapter (an example: supposedly a boy jumps from the roof of a building, trying to land on the deck of a ship. The ship moves, the boy falls between the ship, and dies. The commentator will subtract all sense of authority not only with the scene itself, but with the possibility of that scene happening at all. Hmm), and you’re in a situation where, for good reason, your sense of trust has much to do with what the story becomes for you.

Ah, but there you are, right where Sorrentino puts (and, presumably, wants) you. The man who’s narrative we’re following is not the most sympathetic character you’re likely to find in all of literature. He’s cloddish at times, confused more often than not, and while he’s never outright stupid, he’s just sort of...dorky (none of which is to say that, therefore, his story is uninteresting). He doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, he can’t step back from his life for a glimpse of what the smart thing would be to do, and so he goes, like we all do, off incomplete data. Off what’s right at the moment.

Which, of course, is what you’re doing, when you read. Reading, by definition, is an act of trust: lying narrators are the vast minority, and when we do find them (early Tobias Wolff, for example), there’s that shovel-to-the-guts feel of betrayal. And this book is a glowing example of what’s just one notch down from a lying narrator: the narratives can sort of be broken down into what happened in the world, according to how the main character recalls and lived it, and the commentary of an objective observer. Of course there will be discrepancies: are you absolutely sure of every detail in every scene from your life so far? No, obviously. And so we’re left with, now, three stories: what the character recalls having happened, what the commentator picks apart, and what’s left.

What’s left is (and go with this, despite the soggy feel of Hallmark) a captivating story. Captivating both like Orca whales at SeaWorld and like a song that brings you to your emotional knees every time. There’s a clear connection between how deeply you get sucked into the stories and how frustrated you are. My advice is to keep your frustration creative and not destructive. First rule: trust this story. And it is, in the end, amazingly, smart and silly equally, funny. And human, in that you’ll change your mind about the character pretty much every step of the way. Last, and most amazing of all: complete.

- Weston Cutter

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