Literary Exile in Residence

In January 1968, Delacorte published Gil Orlovitz’s first novel, Milkbottle H, and it didn’t do well at all. American reviewers at best regarded it with grudging and tentative praise and at worst with snarling invective. “So where’s the surprise in that?” one might ask; “a first novel is lucky to be reviewed at all.” The “surprise”—to the extent that “surprise” is the right word—is manifold. Orlovitz is fifty-one years old and for years has been highly regarded by the literary underground. He is regarded so highly in some quarters in Great Britain that the Cork Examiner called Milkbottle H “one of the great, if not the greatest literary achievements of our time,” and The Scotsman touted it as “a major event in the history of the American imagination.” Circulated for years among American publishers, Milkbottle H was accepted for publication first by Calder and Boyars in London; and before the American edition had even gone to press Hanser Verlag and Mondadori had contracted to do German and Italian editions. Surely the discrepancy between American and foreign reactions to Orlovitz and his work ought to have proved sufficient stuff out of which to weave some energetic controversy. One “surprise” is that to date no such controversy has been forthcoming.