Boswell is Stanley Elkin's first and funniest novel: the comic odyssey of a twentieth-century groupie who collects celebrities as his insurance policy against death. James Boswell--strong man, professional wrestler (his most heroic match is with the Angel of Death)-- is a con man, a gate crasher, and a moocher of epic talent. He is also the hero of one of the most original novel in years ( Oakland Tribune)--a man on the make for all the great men of his time--his logic being that if you can't be a lion, know a pride of them. Can he cheat his way out of mortality?
Boswell is Stanley Elkin's first and funniest novel: the comic odyssey of a twentieth-century groupie who collects celebrities as his insurance policy...
Look who's on the "Dick Gibson Radio Show": Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline - except for cloud cover and fog banks"). Bernie Perk, the burning pharmacist. Henry Harper, the nine-year old orphan millionaire, terrified of being adopted. The woman whose life revolves around pierced lobes. An evil hypnotist. Swindlers. Con-men. And Dick Gibson himself. Anticipating talk radio and its crazed hosts, Stanley Elkin creates a brilliant comic world held together by American manias and maniacs in all their forms, and a character who perfectly understands what...
Look who's on the "Dick Gibson Radio Show": Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline - except for cloud cover and fog...
Bobbo Druff, a coca leaf-chewing street commissioner on the cusp of just-past-it, transforms his mid-life crisis into a paranoid web of mysterious events in a plot reminiscent of Hitchcock.
Bobbo Druff, a coca leaf-chewing street commissioner on the cusp of just-past-it, transforms his mid-life crisis into a paranoid web of mysterious eve...
These nine stories reveal a dazzling variety of styles, tones and subject matter. Among them are some of Stanley Elkin s finest, including the fabulistic On a Field, Rampant, the farcical Perlmutter at the East Pole, and the stylized A Poetics for Bullies. Despite the diversity of their form and matter, each of these stories shares Elkin s nimble, comic, antic imagination, a dedication to the value of form and language, and a concern with a single theme: the tragic inadequacy of a simplistic response to life."
These nine stories reveal a dazzling variety of styles, tones and subject matter. Among them are some of Stanley Elkin s finest, including the fabulis...
Surrounded by cemeteries in the flatlands of New Jersey, the small town of Lud is sustained by the business of death. In fact, with no synagogue and no congregation, Rabbi Jerry Goldkorn has only one true responsibility: to preside over burial services for Jews who pass away in the surrounding cities. But after the Arctic misadventures that led him to Lud, he wouldn't want to live (or die) anywhere else.
As the only living child in Lud, his daughter Connie has a different opinion of this grisly city, and she will do anything to get away from it--or at least liven it up a bit. Things get...
Surrounded by cemeteries in the flatlands of New Jersey, the small town of Lud is sustained by the business of death. In fact, with no synagogue an...
The three novellas collected in Van Gogh's Room at Arles demonstrate once again Stanley Elkin's mastery of the English language, with exuberant rants on almost every page, unexpected plot twists, and jokes that leave readers torn between laughter and tears. "Her Sense of Timing" relates a destructive day in the life of a wheelchair-bound professor who is abandoned by his wife at the worst possible time, leaving him to preside -- helplessly -- over a party for his students that careens out of control. The second story in this collection tells of an unsuspecting commoner catapulted into royalty...
The three novellas collected in Van Gogh's Room at Arles demonstrate once again Stanley Elkin's mastery of the English language, with exuberant rants ...
An ambitious, digressive, and endlessly entertaining account of the thousand-year history of the George Millses, George Mills is the antithesis to the typical Horatio Alger story. Since the First Crusade, there has always been a George Mills, who despite his best efforts is unable to improve his position in life or that of his descendants. Instead, all the George Millses are forced to accept their lot as true blue-collar workers, serving important personages in a series of odd jobs ranging from horse talker in a salt mine to working as a furniture mover in contemporary St. Louis. But the...
An ambitious, digressive, and endlessly entertaining account of the thousand-year history of the George Millses, George Mills is the antithesis to the...
Published posthumously in 1995, Mrs. Ted Bliss tells the story of an eighty-two-year-old widow starting life anew after the death of her husband. As Dorothy Bliss learns to cope with the mundane rituals of life in a Florida retirement community, she inadvertently becomes involved with a drug kingpin trying to use her as a front for his operations. Combining a comic plot with a deep concern for character, Elkin ends his career with a vivid portrait of a woman overcoming loss, a woman who is both recognizable and as unique as Elkin's other famous characters.
Published posthumously in 1995, Mrs. Ted Bliss tells the story of an eighty-two-year-old widow starting life anew after the death of her husband. A...
