The three novellas collected in Van Gogh's Room at Arles demonstrate once again Stanley Elkin's mastery of the English language, with exuberant rants on almost every page, unexpected plot twists, and jokes that leave readers torn between laughter...
As he's chauffeured about in his official limousine, aging City Commissioner of Streets Bobbo Druff comes to a frightening realization: he's lost force, the world has started to condescend to him. His once fear-inspiring figure has become...
Three novellas filled with humor and insight by one of America’s modern literary masters.
In Searches & Seizures, Elkin tells the story of the criminal, the lovelorn, and the grieving, each searching desperately for ...
Published posthumously in 1995, Mrs. Ted Bliss tells the story of an eighty-two-year-old widow starting life anew after the death of her husband. As Dorothy Bliss learns to cope with the mundane rituals of life in a Florida retirement community,...
These nine stories reveal a dazzling variety of styles, tones and subject matter. Among them are some of Stanley Elkin's finest, including the fabulistic "On a Field, Rampant," the farcical "Perlmutter at the East Pole," and the stylized "A...
Surrounded by cemeteries in the flatlands of New Jersey, the small town of Lud is sustained by the business of death. In fact, with no synagogue and no congregation, Rabbi Jerry Goldkorn has only one true responsibility: to preside over burial...
Abandoned by his wife and devastated by the death of his twelve-year old son, Eddy Bale becomes obsessed with the plight of terminally ill children and develops a plan to provide a last hurrah dream vacation for seven children who will never...
Killed during a senseless holdup, kindhearted Ellerbee finds himself on a whirlwind tour of a distressingly familiar theme park Heaven and inner-city Hell, where he learns the truth about God's love and wrath. Reprint....
Ben Flesh is one of the men "who made America look like America, who made America famous." He collects franchises, traveling from state to state, acquiring the brand-name establishments that shape the American landscape. But both the nation and...
Look who's on the "Dick Gibson Radio Show": Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline — except for cloud cover and fog banks"). Bernie Perk, the burning pharmacist. Henry Harper, the nine-year old orphan...