Fond of fracturing readers' expectations, Stanley Elkin made his most profound impact on his fellow writers. Toward the end of his life, his books were falling out of print, and only specialized editions of some novels were widely available. However,...

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 innovations in fictional form, his books were falling...

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 his son's literary career. Married to Joan Marion...

I wanted to buy How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life by Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, but now I will have to wait until she removes the parts she plagiarized from Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty. I have...

I wanted to buy How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life by Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, but now I will have to wait until she removes the parts she plagiarized from Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty. I...

So where do you find Truly Weird America these days? Does the “Ghost World” exist any more? The Old, Weird America: That was the title of Greil Marcus’ admirably eccentric and illuminating book on the obscure sources of the Basement Tapes; it was the world...

So where do you find Truly Weird America these days? Does the “Ghost World” exist any more?The Old, Weird America: That was the title of Greil Marcus’ admirably eccentric and illuminating book on the obscure sources of the Basement Tapes; it was the world of...

[Howard is American novelist, essayist, critic, and autobiographer whose works include the novels Expensive Habits (1986) and Natural History (1992). In the following highly positive review of Mrs. Ted Bliss, she compares Elkin to Mark Twain and Herman Melville, describing him as "an American writer of the first rank."]

[Wolitzer is an American novelist, critic, and author of children's literature. In the following review of Van Gogh's Room at Arles, she praises Elkin's prose style, humor, and compassionate understanding of his characters.]

[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" literary style and the irreverence, tenacity, and "breath-stopping candor" with which he lived his life.]