From Publishers Weekly
Composed entirely in interrogative sentences, this spoof of boys' adventure books gives the humble question mark a serious workout and taxes readers as well. Gold Fools by experimentalist Gilbert Sorrentino (Mulligan Stew, etc.) charts the adventures of teenage boys Nort and Dick Shannon and Bud Merkel as they traipse through the Gila Desert on a quest for desert gold. Exuberant, inventive and thoroughly maddening, Sorrentino's eccentric work fearlessly tests all kinds of boundaries. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Three teenage boys, Nort and Dick Shannon and their friend, Bud Merkel, find themselves in the middle of the forbidding Gila Desert on an adventure that will, they hope, lead them to the fabled riches of desert gold. Their guides, the grizzled prospector, Hank Crosby, and the leathery old cowpoke, Billee Dobb, accompany them through blistering heat, savage sandstorms, and the dangers posed by the evil Del Pinzo and his sinister Indian companion, Zapto, men who want the treasure for themselves.

In this brilliant, witty, yet fond burlesque of the boys' adventure books that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, Gilbert Sorrentino recreates the nobly overdetermined aura of those writings and their adventure, danger, action, and suspense. Adding to the reader's pleasures in this meticulous farce, Gold Fools is written wholly in interrogative sentences, so that the narrative is, in part, "made" of the answers given by the reader to questions at once sincere, rhetorical, and parenthetical. A blend of comedy, affectionate salute, and formal panache, Gold Fools is truly unique.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly