— There is only one hard calendar date given in A Strange Commonplace, which is New Year’s Eve 1949. This is in chapter 14 of the first book.
–(Corollary. Because the male character in this chapter is the same age as Sorrentino would have been in that year, an autobiographical dimension to the book as a whole seems implied.)
— The historical time of A Strange Commonplace ranges from the 1930’s to the 1990’s. There’s nothing to suggest either the Jazz Age or the Post 9/11 world (or anything before the former, or after the latter period). Though the book was published in 2005, the most advanced technology it mentions is the color television set — and when people are watching the television, they are most often watching movies from the thirties.
–(Corollary. The cultural figures mentioned are heavily weighted toward the beginning and end of these epochs. There is Robert Benchley and John Cusack, Gail Patrick and Meryl Streep, but no Rolling Stones, Jack Benny, Elvis — no 50’s, 60’s, 70’s cultural figures… Why?)
—A Strange Commonplace is intergenerational. One generation is the ‘Ross Columbo’ generation: what I will think of as Sorrentino’s parents’ age. The other is Sorrentino’s generation — “the Charlie Parker generation.” These latter are the ones we see the most of: as children, as parents, as seniors.
–To be noted: that Sorrentino makes no use of world history, its “big events”, in relaying information about time. We see no evidence of WWII, of the Korean War, of the Great Depression, of any of that. No mention of Eisenhower or the Beatles. It is rather through cultural and social markers, often fairly obscure ones, and local and personal history, that as readers we might distinguish (if it is in fact at all important that we do so) the events of the thirties, say, from those of the eighties.
–To be noted: nostalgia and its opposite (feeling bitter about the past) are fairly dominant themes here. (I think for instance this is the “curious sadness” of the man in the second Saturday Afternoon.) Whatever might be of importance, good or bad, happened a while ago while the present is merely unreality, indiscretion, alcohol — “another story.”
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