The confusion of narrative levels in Korsoniloff is … annoying. It seems, as often as not, an excuse for incoherence, a trick from a rhetorical chest of drawers…. But the desperation that surrounds the creation of Korsoniloff, and indeed of the novel as a whole, has a [fine] madness in its creation…. It does not achieve Sternean control (though it seems to be aiming for that), but it manifests a creative sensitivity that is more than destructively facile. And more than that, for all the trival self-preoccupation and schizophrenic posing, the novel's language at least is indicative to which Korsoniloff himself pays tribute: "Control is the key. I seem to need to retain control over what I am writing."

D.D.C. Chambers, "Books Reviewed: 'Korsoniloff'," in The Canadian Forum, Vol. L, No. 593, June, 1970, p. 149.