Word: gibsons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...DICK GIBSON SHOW by Stanley Elkin. 335 pages. Random House...
...Though hypocrisy can take you far, it can only take you so far," says Dick Gibson, the protean-enriched radio personality of Stanley Elkin's third novel. It is one of those ebullient statements that instantly sprouts provocative questions: How far do you want to go? Who will you be when you get there...
...Dick Gibson of the title, a seriocomic straight man in a burlesque mythology of mass culture, wants to go all the way. But not vertically (to a network presidency), or even horizontally to become one of those tympanic coast-to-coast voices that always "seem to speak from the frontiers of commitment." Instead, like the wrestler in Elkin's first novel (Boswell) and the department store owner in his second (A Bad Man), Gibson craves the all-points dimension of human need...
...itinerant early media man, he has worked for dozens of small-town radio stations. As the perpetual apprentice, whetting his skills and adopting names and accents to suit geography, he evolves into part of American folklore. As Dick Gibson, the paradox of his truest identity is that he is from Nowhere, U.S.A. "Regionless my placeless vowels, my sourceless consonants," Gibson ululates into the silence and emptiness-the somber and pervasive background of life that is Elkin's real concern. Like Scheherazade, Gibson holds fate off with talk, "life-giving and meaningless and sweet as appetite...
...Gibson, a black Democrat, to discuss the city's impoverishment...