Gilbert Sorrentino is one of the most accomplished innovators in twentieth-century fiction, a position that is everywhere confirmed in this trilogy of novels, Odd Number, Rose Theatre, and Misterioso.Beginning with a series of interrogations (we never do find out why they are being conducted) about characters drawn from other Sorrentino novels and concluding with the reappearance of the same characters, Pack of Lies is Gilbert Sorrentino's testament to the supremacy of art and society, and a vicious comedy portraying a world of fraud and mayhem. "Sorrentino has established an artistic beachhead over the past twenty years; one could think of him . . . as a sort of American literary conscience." (Washington Post) "Perhaps in this consolidated form the trilogy will at last be recognized as the utterly significant work that it is. . . . As this trilogy abundantly demonstrates, with its lampooning of everything from the art world to the conventions of Boy's Books to radical feminism to Nazi Germany, its pathologically insistent and sometimes frighteningly severe contempt for what falls short of the highest artistic standards, Sorrentino has never abandoned the pleasures of the imagination." (Cups Aug-Sept 97) "Sorrentino's work demands rereading, indeed, demands revisions of the reading process, and in so doing is rewarding for several reasons." (Rain Taxi Fall 97) "As any reader of not only the trilogy, but also novels such as the earlier Mulligan Stew, can testify, Sorrentino is uproariously funny, and the enormous humor of his outrageous stylistic tours de force is what propels the reader on. . . . The endless varieties of parody, pastiche, quotation, and plagarism in postmodern fiction give ample occasion for laughter, and yet Sorrentino's brand of humor is so distinctive that a discussion of comedy in general does not quite do justice to his specific achievement." (American Book Review March-April 98)