Word: elkin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...LIVING END by Stanley Elkin; Dutton; 148 pages...
...first-rate comic art, the 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...
...Baylor Elkin...
...Flesh may be corruptible, and Author Elkin's spendthrift talent some times threatens to knock the bottom out of the word market entirely. But The Franchiser has what few novels have any more: the ability to astonish and delight and a totally conscious hero who proves that the unaudited life is not worth living...
...Elkin is a professor of English literature at Washington University in St. Louis. He writes about people caught in the heavy traffic of American life. Many of his heroes are businessmen whose urges go beyond a Cash McCall drive for power and money. They see business as part of a cosmic magic show, an exuberant prestidigitation of goods and services. Emotions, like capital, can be risked for big gains or hoarded at little or no interest. The world, for all its misery and flyspeck existence in a galaxy of countless dead stars, is something very special. Here, for example...