After Roland Barthes announced the "death of the author", Sukenick carried the metaphor even further in "the death of the novel". He drew up a list of what is missing: reality doesn't exist, nor time or personality. He was widely recognized as a controversial writer who, frequently humorously, questioned and rejected the conventions of traditional fiction-writing. In novels, short stories, literary criticism and history, he often used himself, family members or friends as characters, sometimes quoting them in tape-recorded conversations. He did stints as writer in residence at Cornell, the University of California, Irvine and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But his books were never best-sellers. Sukenick once commented that he had "only forty fans, but they're all fanatics."
He was divorced from Lynn Luria (Lynn Sukenick) in 1984. He lived with Julia Frey[4] for many years, and they were formally married in 1992. Her book on Toulouse-Lautrec is now a standard work.[5] She collaborated on Sukenick's posthumously published story "For the Invisible, Against Thinking" set in Bali.
Down and In - Life in the Underground: Bohemian to Hip to Beat to Rock and Punk - Mutiny in American Culture. Beech Tree Books. 1987. ISBN978-0-688-06589-8. autobiography