I only just heard about the death of Gilbert Sorrentino (on May 18). I had limited contact with him during my Stanford days, but the contact was very important to me: he was the second reader of my honors thesis on Milan Kundera. I only talked with him a few times about Kundera and my thesis, and I do not remember any details of the conversations, but I do remember his warmth and his appreciation of my first truly serious efforts in literary criticism. And of course I appreciated his comments on the thesis when it was finished: the memorable element was that he wrote that he had never taken Kundera seriously before, but that I had made him do so.