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, lit...

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 rapidly...

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 Jaco...

Lydia Conscience, 11, pretends to be pregnant. In fact, she's got ovarian cancer--there's a forty-pound tumor aslosh in her womb--but better a slut than a terminal. Janet Order looks like a pretty child, but only in a black and white photograph. In fact,...

DISNEYWAR By James B. Stewart. Simon & Schuster. 572 pp. $29.95 To understand the universe of DisneyWar, James B. Stewart's exhaustive study of corporate and personal neurosis during Michael D. Eisner's 21-year tenure as head of the Disney empire, consider this: In...