Stanley Elkin Summary

Stanly Elkin was born in New York City on 11 May 1930 and was raised in Chicago. His father, a traveling salesman with a gift for storytelling, probably exerted the single most important influence on ... Read more

When Stanley Elkin died in 1995, he had already fallen into the dreaded category of "a writer's writer." Although literary critics and fellow novelists continued to celebrate his daring, zany innovati... Read more

Critical Essay by Christopher Lehmann-haupt ["The Living End" is] the work of a man who is desperately trying to joke away death…. [Any] little thing that may go wrong with &#... Read more

Critical Essay by William Plummer Stanley Elkin is a "writer's writer," a designation at once happy and sad. Sad because his older titles are not to be found at the nearest paper... Read more

Critical Essay by Henry Robbins The Living End is Stanley Elkin's comic fable of Heaven, Hell and the Last Days, a small book big in every way but length. And I should say at once that this &#... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert Maurer Unlike his 18th-century namesake, the hero of this outrageous "modern comedy" [Boswell] is as undiscriminating in his admiration of great men as an autog... Read more

Critical Essay by Raymond M. Olderman I don't know if Searches and Seizures … is Stanley Elkin's best book, but I'll tell you one thing—it's terrific. I feel... Read more

Critical Essay by Joel Conarroe The heroes (or antiheroes) of Stanley Elkin's novels have Anglo-Saxon names like Dick Gibson, James Boswell, and George Mills, but once they start to talk any t... Read more

Critical Essay by Frances Taliaferro The short and simple annals of the poor have often been the starting point for Stanley Elkin's wild, raunchy imagination. George Mills is no exception, but... Read more

[In the following, Grimes reviews Elkin's life and career, noting that "his work veered toward parody and black humor—and his highly wrought sentences formed a dense, self-contain... Read more

[Wolff, an American novelist, biographer, essayist, and educator, was a close friend of Elkin's. In the following reminiscence, he describes the author's "extravagant" lite... Read more

[Prose is an American novelist, short story writer, critic, and educator. In the following excerpt, she argues that Van Gogh's Room at Arles is Elkin's best book.] Stanley Elkin write... Read more

[Goodman is an American journalist and critic who frequently writes on television for The New York Times. In the following review of Mrs. Ted Bliss, he argues that, though it is not Elkin's bes... Read more