Up — 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.