Word: bondsman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...funnier the surfaces the sadder the depths. Nowhere is that clearer than in the novels and short stories of Stanley Elkin, whose improvisations on the American way and the English language make him our foremost literary jazz band. His most exuberant characters-a department store owner, a bail bondsman, an itinerant radio announcer-combine the energy and appetites of the Middle West with the legendary qualities of Sholom Aleichem's villagers. Elkin makes much joyful noise unto the Lord, but there is also banter to deflect the wrath, and complaining because it might do some good. There...
...county seat, an hour away. To do so, they had to go through the formality of arresting him on a civil charge--failure to register for the climb, which entails a $25-to-$30 fine. Bail was set. However, Yates didn't have the money to both pay the bondsman and buy a bus ticket back to Cambridge. Plus, there was the lure of spending a night--on civil disobedience charges--in jail. So jail...
Hard Dollar. It is not simply that Alex is a fool for punishment. He makes his living from it. He pulls down a hard dollar as a bail bondsman and indulges in much gruff whimsy during working hours. "What's the good word?" a gangster client asks him innocently. Alex pounces: "Sunset is a good word. Pretzel is a good word." At last, the gypsy stirring in her soul, Maritza jumps the bail that Alex has posted for her assault rap and heads for Mazatlán in a private plane, accompanied by a rich gent with a lickerish...
...money, too, has gone into Las Vegas hotels and gambling casinos, such as the Dunes and Caesars Palace. Some of it has simply vanished. The Government has brought fraud and conspiracy charges against borrowers and trustees alike. Last year prosecutors secured an indictment against Irwin Weiner, a Chicago bail bondsman with Mob connections, for allegedly defrauding the fund of $1.4 million in a scheme to buy a plastics plant in New Mexico. As the case was about to go to trial, the Government's star witness was shotgunned to death before his wife and children. The prosecution pressed ahead...
...Searches & Seizures, a collection of three novellas, each Elkin hero obeys his needs with results that vary from the bitterly funny to the preposterous and pathetic. Alexander Main of The Bail-bondsman is a kind of clawlike extension of the law's arm-a bondsman who pursues his work with outrageous devotion. A typical Elkin creation, Main promotes himself to legendary status, invoking history, philosophy and myth until he seems like a burlesque Mephistopheles to petty criminals...