Louis, Missouri, where he has been-- except for various visiting professorships--since 1960. In 1963 he won the
Paris Review Humor Prize for "The Great Sandusky," a selection from his then forthcoming first novel.
Elkin has been an increasingly prominent literary presence since the mid-1960s. The central themes in his work--four novels, a collection of short stories, and three novellas--dramatize contemporary conflicts in communication which derive from the effects of America's consumer culture on the one hand and popular culture on the other. The novelist fills consumer and popular culture with a poetry and meaning previously achieved in contemporary American pop art and poetry but never before brought to such a high literary level in prose. The trivia of a consumer-oriented, mass-producing, multi-media society are elevated to an epic dimension through his metaphoric inventiveness and the colorful professional jargon of his heroes. Most of Elkin's fiction is dominated by orphaned protagonists who are obsessed with a professional life they cherish in lieu of a family life. Their business is usually one that stresses oratorical skills, e.g., salesmanship or broadcasting. The episodic but carefully structured plots of the novels aptly reflect the heroes' homeless, unsettled lives and their tightly organized businessman's rounds.
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