Word: fictional
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Stanley Elkin is one of the perennial bridesmaids of American fiction. Part of the problem is that the styles Elkin employs are beginning to show their age. His prose is creased by the crow's-feet of '50s black humor, it shows the slight stoop of Jewish realism and the weird droop of the surreal as well. There is no denying, though, that when Elkin puts them together-as he did in Boswell, A Bad Man, The Dick Gibson Show and now The Franchiser-the results are fresh...
...character. These descriptions are sensitive and poetic, especially when the interviewee is someone you liked, or admired: Golda Meir, Dom Camara, Alexandros Panagoulis--people you can portray as heroic. But these sections of the book are also those where you type of journalism reveals itself for what it is: fiction. Each of the 14 people in Interview with History is introduced so that the reader sees the individual as a symbol of something much bigger. Your technique encourages the reader to forget that you invented any symbolism you see. Then you proceed to back up your perception with "fact" through...
Caroming between gloom and euphoria, the reader of such conflicting reports can hardly be blamed for a queasy feeling of futurist shock. For prophecy is no longer confined to science fiction or Jeane Dixon. It is in the laboratories, think tanks, universities - everywhere. A.D. 2000 has now replaced 1984 as the favorite year for speculation. At least 400 colleges are offering futurist courses; the World Future Society claims 18,000 members, holds international conferences and produces a semimonthly journal, The Futurist, to ponder new times...
Benchley doles out this tale in the standard measures of escapist fiction: ever escalating shocks at predictable intervals. Early on, the effect can be ludicrous: Will David get stuck in an elevator? Will his wife accidentally drink a glass of hydrochloric acid? What is the meaning of her mysterious nosebleed? Later the blood flows everywhere and the sea is awash with gore: "The moray struck, needle teeth fastening on the man's neck, throat convulsing as it pulled back toward the hole. Blood billowed out of the sides of the moray's mouth." That moray eel, which figures...
...FICTION 1-1876, VidaK I last week...