SOURCE: An obituary in The New York Times, June 2, 1995, p. A25.

[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-contained linguistic world."]

Stanley Elkin, a stylistic virtuoso whose novels, short stories and novellas were at once lyrical, bleak and fantastic, died on Wednesday at Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He was 65 and lived in University City, Mo.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Molly.

Mr. Elkin, the author of Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, Searches and Seizures, The Magic Kingdom and The Franchiser, was often described as a clear-eyed realist—even though his work veered toward parody and black humor—and his highly wrought sentences formed a dense, self-contained linguistic world. Although he paid scant attention to plot and incident, his deliberately preposterous fictional situations led...