A work of true comic genius, [Mulligan Stew] not only entertains and engages the intelligent reader, but also manages to shed light on the processes of literary creation, on the making of bad novels as well as good ones.

Mulligan Stew may prove to be the literary curiosity of the year, perhaps the decade….

[It's] easy to see why some editors were reluctant to take the book on. Mulligan Stew is long (and to my mind could still stand a good pruning). It fits into no standard literary genre…. Abounding in puns both delicious and terrible and in allusions to a vast range of other literature, Mulligan Stew requires readers with well-furnished minds and a taste for verbal pyrotechnics….

To appreciate Mulligan Stew properly, the reader must realize Sorrentino's strategy: to fashion a wonderful literary concoction out of ingredients in themselves often quite horrible and unpalatable. The book...