Up

by Ronald Sukenick

When Ronald Sukenick's first novel, UP , came out in 1968, post-modernism, avant-pop and autofiction hadn't been invented yet. UP invented them. Ronald Sukenick's ten subsequent books are typically twenty or thirty years ahead of their time, and UP is more timely than ever. Ronald Sukenick is himself the main character of his book, in which he glides undisturbed from present to future, from reality to fantasy. Some of the time 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. His comings and goings produce a stunning tour de force of a novel—mutinous, violent, sexy, sad, and above all, funny.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature, Humor

330 pages, 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.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ronald Sukenick is a name that I really don’t hear much about. In the conversation around postmodern and metafictional authors of the 1960s and 1970s he really is only known by those looking to dig deeper than the typical Pynchon, Gass, and Gaddis’. It really wasn’t until about a month ago when I saw a review here from Goodreads user Cody that I became aware of Up and Sukenick’s work as a whole. I spent the following weeks scouring all of the local resources I have in the Chicago used bookstore scene. I happened upon this copy of Up by chance while navigating the chaotic shelves of a store here on a relatively temperate Sunday afternoon in January, all for just $8.

Up is Sukenick’s first novel and what a debut it is. First published in 1968, it was released at the height of the metafictional wave. This book looks to take on the established bildungsroman and autofiction novels through a skewering satire that puts the character of Ronald Sukenick into the story as the main protagonist. A metafictional story where the author is the main character is nothing new to me but I don’t think I’ve read a book that does this trick in quite as intriguing a way as is done here in Up.

Up is a patchwork of various stories that center around Sukenick’s life. The character takes much from the author’s actual life. Growing up in New York City to a Jewish American background and living his adult life in NYC working as an academic, teaching at a university. Much of this book is vignettes of his life played out in absurd and extreme ways. We see many fundamental moments from his adolescents as well as his experiences in academia and the bustling life of 1960s New York.

The narrative of this book is told without any chapter breaks, although there are many natural breaks that are notated with a double paragraph break. The reading experience was pretty straightforward and comprehensive given the style in which it was written. Many books of this style and time period can be obtuse and impenetrable on first read but I didn’t find that to be the case here. I was drawn in instantly and hooked throughout my reading experience.

This is one of the book's strongest points. Sukenick writes such vivid scenes that really place you in the world he is describing, even if that world is surreal or ridiculous. I was amazed how well Sukenick immediately sets you in a scene and how easily I found it alternating between time periods, perspectives, and forms.

All of this to say about the reading experience is not to say that this is a simple or straight forward book. Like any great postmodern work I feel like there is much that was left unanswered for me on first read and a reread is already demanding its existence. There is so much that happens in this book that you kind of get lost in the fast paced, constant one upping of the plot. While there is plenty that is permanently burned into my mind from this book I know there are just as many elements that are forgotten. This lack of recollection is not due to these points being uninteresting but just that the eye catching elements are so strong throughout.

When reading a great postmodern work like Gravity’s Rainbow or The Public Burning I’ve experienced these moments where I can’t believe what I’m reading. That the words on the page really just crafted an image or idea so visceral that it feels as if I’ve stumbled upon a new revelation. That the form of written language can capture ideas, tones, or experiences with such vivid veracity. I had that feeling at least three times while reading Up. The kinds of things held in this book are so extreme and so absurd. This awe is amplified when you understand that this book was published 58 years ago.

Any highly effective postmodern book published prior to Gravity’s Rainbow really gets added acclaim from me. I’m amazed by the literary landscape that existed prior to this monumental release and how authors, often authors far less known than Pynchon, came to these ideas and tactics before his magnum opus. Up joins Brigid Brophy’s In Transit in this class of personal favorite postmodern works that hit on so much of what is captured in the themes and tone of Gravity’s Rainbow prior to 1973.

Up looks to capture the essence of the 1960s in all its lack and luster. While parts of the narrative predate this decade, the book centralizes around the experience of Sukenick in 1960s New York as well as the cultural revolution that was in the midst of. Much of the book looks to comment on the counterculture in terms of subverting expectations, pushing new boundaries, and of course the sexual revolution.

Back in 2007, Goodreads user Tye Moody described this book as “Like Thomas Pynchon's down-syndrome afflicted older brother.”. While as humorous and memorable as that descriptor may be, I found a more apt comparison to be a “horny John Barth”. Up really is like if you combined The End of the Road with Lost in the Funhouse. While sex, and the boundary pushing aspects of discussing sex are common in postmodern works, I’ve never come across a book as sex crazed as this one. Much of the Sukenick characters' adolescent moments revolve around sexual encounters and the adult Sukenick is not too different. Every mention of a woman in this book is done in a lustful way, describing appearances if not more. The sexualization and sexism of the book is one of its largest barriers to entry for modern readers (aside from finding a copy). I will say that these were my least favorite parts of this book as it severely dates it but it also helps amplify that encapsulation of what the 1960s really were.

Nostalgia gives those looking back in time a rose tinted view of the past but reading a book like this really gives you the feel of the 1960s without any redaction. For as progressive as the counterculture and sexual revolution were, it is clear that sexism and a gender hierarchy were still very much modeled after a mainstream patriarchal worldview. The opening lyrics of the Grateful Dead’s “Jack Straw” are a prime example of this. It's also worth noting that this mimicry of mainstream patriarchy is something we still see in contemporary progressive spaces, although not on the level of the 1960s.

While not favorable, I found the sexism of the book to be an authentic display of the 1960s really making the book's metafiction feel more rooted in reality. This element of the writing and its association with the character of Ronald Sukenick lends itself well to the grander discussion of what Sukenick the author is doing here writing a book like this.

In an interview given by Alexander Laurence in April 1995 Sukenick said this in relation to the comments about sex in his books.

“This could be an embarrassing and incriminating question. Let me just say that me writing is often a combination of experience and embroidery, but from the time I was working on Up, I decided that as far as writing goes, there was a continuum between what seems to be actual experience and what’s completely fantastic or fantasy-like. Because it’s writing, it doesn’t make any difference to the reader. That’s not the point, despite the eternal talk-show question of “Whether this really happened?” The reader doesn’t know and can’t know because it’s not actual lived experience, it’s writing experience. It’s a different kind of thing. So it makes it easy and even advisable to extend the possibilities of one’s actual autobiography into imagined autobiography.”

This kind of quote is the typical kind of response that a metafiction writer gives when questioned on some of the racier aspects of their writing. I always find this to be a bit of a cop out. Yes, this is a work of fiction and the author should explore and expand boundaries in their work but at the end of the day, the real life author is the one to make these comments and while they may not fully embody these ideas in their own life there is something within them that does correlate with these ideas to some degree and that gray area gets pretty iffy the more you include extreme acts such as casually discussing sexual assault and racial prejudice.

If these aspects turn you off I don’t blame you. This book isn’t for everyone and leans pretty heavy on edginess. I will say that the edginess of this book really feels a lot more purposeful. Once again I’ve got to remind readers that this book was published in 1968. Mentions of rape in jest, dead babies, and nazi exploitation really were revolutionary subjects to discuss at the time. As someone who came of age in the wild west of the internet I’ve heard all of these South Park tier jokes before but still, I was amazed reading them here and seeing someone capture this kind of style 30 years before Matt Stone and Trey Parker signed a deal with Comedy Central.

Sukenick was writing these kinds of situations in 1968 because he was pushing the status quo, making a statement on what writing could be. These scenarios feel purposeful rather than mean-spirited or solely reactionary for a cheap shock.

Throughout the book we get very crass scenarios that discuss themes such as abortion, population control, reverence around the holocaust, and the contradictions of progressive politics. All topics that were starting to be explored in the 1960s and still hold cultural relevance today. Whether it be making a bigger statement on one of these topics or just showcasing the new boundary of what was possible with the written word I found the majority of what was here to be of great substance than just edginess.

Overall what gives Sukenick a “pass” for me on his more grating elements is how much allure and charm he puts into his writing. Like I said, I was hooked reading this, even through the most difficult passages. I’ve read other postmodern metafictional works where authors make a form of themselves the protagonist with a far worse success rate. Usually the author’s ego bleeds on to the page, the pretentiousness of the act only alienating the reader, and the snarkiness of it takes over the tone of the book. I think Sukenick does a good job of keeping a balance on these aspects, not diving in too deeply. Towards the end of the book we get a scene where “SUKENICK IS A TERRIFIC EGOMANIC. EVERYBODY WATCH OUT.”(295). Is explicitly stated. It's not that this absolves Sukenick by being self aware but that it acknowledges these strains in the narrative and the relationship between reader, writer, and the work.

The humor and the way in which this book honestly captures the most exciting parts of the time period and its author are what made this work for me. Like I said, I’ve read books where this doesn’t work for me and if this doesn’t work for you I can see why. As an introduction to Sukenick I am truly amazed and interested in continuing reading more from him to say the least.

Towards the end we get a paragraph that I think pretty well captures the overall objective of the book.

“Forced prostitution, naked girls kissing swastikas in Nazi slave brothels. A thirst for cruelty, betrayal, a taste for violence. I once got this girl to where she liked masturbating with a loaded pistol. Loathsome but beautiful. You get the scene Baby? Now that’s what sells a novel. I’ll tell you all about it sweetheart you just write it down. Or you can come along if you want. We can make a movie out of it. You know I think you have an admirable manuscript here. Sure, Bernie showed it to me, what did you think? Just spice it up a little bit and we’re going to have a hot property on our hands. A few scenes like the one I’m suggesting and a title like I Was an Egghead Nymphomaniac or whatever it is, you can make it up. That’s the way it works baby, that’s the way it works. Put in a few good jokes, a little satire, a typographical trick or two, and call it avant garde. I run a little-known but highly lucrative publishing house and I’m in a position to know that you stand to make a lot of money sweetheart. That means you’ll be famous. You'll make a great writer. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” (300).

That pretty much sums up this book. I won’t spoil the ending but it is one of the best metafictional endings I’ve read, which is not an easy way to end a book.

When it comes to the title I found associations to the terms "made up" and "catch up" to be most applicable. Made up in relation to the fictional and imaginative elements of this book and catch up in terms of the fast paced narrative. Both of these were directly referenced in the book but I'm sure there are others I'm missing.

While reading I could see the influence of Sukenick on contemporary writers like Rick Harsch and Adam Levin. I know I keep saying it but I can’t believe how obscure this author is and a lot of my enjoyment of this book comes from feeling like I'm unearthing a lost treasure. This is one of the best debut novels I’ve read and I can’t wait to read more from Sukenick. Honestly, more than Up, my interest in Sukenick’s work centralizes around 98.6.

[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.

[Tye Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[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

[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.