Word: elkin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
FICTION: A Philip Roth Reader, Philip Roth ∙ Crackers, Roy Blount Jr. Italian Folktales, selected and retold by Italo Calvino ∙ Loon Lake, E.L. Doctorow ∙ Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits, Stanley Elkin ∙ The Middle Ground, Margaret Drabble ∙ The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty
FICTION: A Philip Roth Reader, Philip Roth ∙Crackers, Roy Blount Jr. Italian Folktales, selected and retold by Italo Calvino ∙Loon Lake,E.L. Doctorow ∙Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits, Stanley Elkin ∙The Middle Ground, Margaret Drabble ∙The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty
FICTION: A Philip Roth Reader, Philip Roth ∙ Crackers, Roy Blount Jr. Italian Folktales, selected and retold by Italo Calvino ∙ Loon Lake, E.L. Doctorow ∙ Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits, Stanley Elkin ∙ The Middle Ground, Margaret Drabble ∙ The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty
...miscues and misfortune that these books portray, they nonetheless inspire elation, the thrill of watching craftsmen work with words. Roth and Elkin are both superb monologists, comic sprinters, which is one reason why excerpts from their longer works still seem satisfyingly self-contained. Roth describes himself as a child with "one foot in col lege, the other in the Catskills," and the Borscht Belt routine is what his first-person narrators constantly imitate, no matter how much they want to sound like Chekhov or Henry James. Elkin's characters are prone to bursts of speechmaking, and their creator...
Much more can be hoped for from Roth, 47, and Elkin, 50. Questions remain: Come on, Roth, will guys ever cope with sex and guilt successfully? Hey, Elkin, is there life after the Apocalypse? For now, these two books offer splendid ways to pass the time while waiting for the answers...