All of Elkin's fictions grow from the interaction of the protagonist and his professional role. Professional concerns are the basis upon which the literary structure is built. The fictional structure is not, however, the linear or curvilinear path of the protagonist's career,… but rather the cluster of episodes which dramatize the development of the protagonist's character. Plot is secondary. (p. 198)
The hero's occupation is important stylistically as well as structurally. It is common enough for novelists to place stress upon their protagonists' profession, but it is an unusual aspect of Elkin's fiction that the profession is so often one bound up with spoken English. All of Elkin's heroes, whether they are in business or in entertainment, share a passion for speech-making. They oscillate between rhapsodic and rhetorical speechmaking, i.e., between speeches in which the speaker's love of literary elements, such as metaphoric patterns, becomes almost an end in itself and speeches in which literary devices are employed as a means of persuading the audience. Whenever the obsessed hero finds himself in rhapsodic ecstasy, he reminds himself of his need to communicate with others and thus to preserve himself from the isolation which threatens him. Once, however, he resumes his role as rhetorical speaker, he realizes that his speech, no matter how brilliant or persuasive it seems, is liable to fall upon deaf ears. The circle is completed when he withdraws again into rhapsody chiefly out of despair over his listeners' unreponsiveness. In self-conscious self-expression, he is both actor and audience. His progressive estrangement from the ordinary is mirrored in a linguistic shift from conventional to avant-garde modes of expression.
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