Remembering Elkin

• Abby Frucht remembers Stanley Elkin at Critical Mass.

There's always time for an Elkin-the-cranky-professor story:

There’d be the usual shuffling of all our body language as Elkin lifted another story from the desk and adjusted his glasses to read. He had a way of deconstructing our sentences even as he spoke them, revealing the flaws in the rhythm and vocabulary via barely discernible shifts in inflection. Carol Sklenicka, whose biography of Raymond Carver comes out in 2009 and who recalls that Elkin referred to his classes as “tutorials,” tells me that he once read one of her entire stories aloud to her in private conference, making “every infelicity…show up like a smashed bug on a windshield. This method was brutal and effective,” she says. After much revision, that story became Carol’s first publication.

“Since when is humility an idea??” Elkin might ask, wobbling a little before finally slumping into his seat, his cane choosing that moment to drop with a clatter onto the floor. His wasn’t a studied irreverence; when he got down to the grit in things, we understood he knew it personally. “Will someone tell me what this story is REALLY about? I’ll tell you what it’s not about. It’s not about some loser asshole sitting around pondering the idea of humility. It’s about some loser asshole who is going to die,” he’d say. “You know how I know that?”

Nobody spoke, because we knew he wanted to be the person to tell us the answer.

“I know that this story is about some loser asshole who is going to die because we’re all loser assholes who are going to die and that’s what every halfway decent story is ever about. Should be, anyway.”

Embarassment of riches

Two great recent finds:

• Robert Birnbaum's author interviews at Identity Theory.

A great literary website with more author interviews you can stick a shake at, the newest being a chitchat with Susan Orlean:

RB: Do you have any fears about people stopping reading?

SO: No. That seems like it is never-ending—the form might keep changing in terms of how things are delivered but what you are talking about is basic human impulse to communicate. I just don't see how you could assume that would go away. And people will always, there will be people who will want to be communicated to and people who want to do the communicating. Whatever the form is, who knows?

• Don Swaim's audio interviews at Wired for Books.

Audio interviews with authors originally broadcast by CBS Radio in the 1980s and 90s. Swaim is a remarkably fluid interviewer and can switch gears and keep the conversation flowing with just about anyone. If you ever wanted to know what your favorite writer sounds like, here's your chance. John Barth speaks in long, elaborate sentences just like the college professor he is; Joyce Carol Oates often seems not to know exactly how to explain what she does; and two Stanley Elkin interviews reveal a slightly cantankerous individual (surprise, surprise).

Street lit, Voltaire's letters, and recommendations

• Brendan Koerner introduces the whiteys to street lit at Slate.

First it was "chick lit," then it was "lad lit," and now here comes "street lit," here exemplified by an admittedly entertaining-sounding tome called Candy Licker, the author going by the nom de plume Noire (of course). This is oh so much marketing crap, these "[fill-in-the-blank] lit" categorizations, evidence of advertisers trying to create trends where none actually exist, and it's disheartening to see advertising approaches for books focusing on narrower and narrower markets. Nevertheless, solicitations aside, they'll still end up being subjected to the same test as every other piece of writing: is it any good?

• A Russian art dealer has purchased the correspondence of Voltaire and Catherine the Great.

Thomas Bompard, a manuscript expert at Sotheby's in Paris who looked after the archive, said: "Voltaire and Catherine never met, but the relationship between these great characters of the 18th century was conducted through these letters." The most telling comments in the letter for today's Russia refer to Catherine's governing style. Mr Bompard said Voltaire, who lambasted the French monarchy during the Enlightenment for its excesses, approved of her role as an "enlightened despot". Catherine, who ruled Russia for three decades until her death in 1796, viewed herself a patron of the arts and liberty, and a "philosopher on the throne", but has been criticised for the little she did for the millions of peasants in her empire.

Ah, well. At least we still have Candide to remember him by.

• A website can help you decide What Should I Read Next?

This is similar to the recommendations offered by Amazon and Netflix, in that the site tailors its recommendations to you based on the ratings you assign to what you've read in the past. It's not exactly comprehensive; I entered the book I'm reading now (The Magic Kingdom by Stanley Elkin) and came up with a recommendation for a Doctor Who book, which isn't quite to my taste. Then I entered Gravity's Rainbow and came up with recommendations for books by William Least Heat-Moon, Erich Maria Remarque, William Gaddis and others, some of which I've actually read, too, so it's not a total wash. You can also take a "What have I read?" test that will help refine your recommendations; it's a pretty fun way for a book lover to kill some time.

Listmania strikes again

• The New York Times tallies up the votes for "the best works of American fiction in the last 25 years."

The winners: Beloved by Toni Morrison, Underworld by Don DeLillo, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and John Updike's four-book "Rabbit" series.

Let's see, I've read Underworld and American Pastoral (and both are extraordinary), and maybe one or two of Updike's Rabbit Engstrom books (which I liked less than some of his other works, like In the Beauty of the Lillies and The Witches of Eastwick). Beloved has sat on my shelf for years, tempting me, but I've put off reading it mostly because it seems more like homework than anything else; something I should read as opposed to something I want to read.

What struck me most was the dominance of Philip Roth in the runners-up, five strong including Operation Shylock, a book which drove me up the wall. I can understand Roth's reputation, especially amongst the urban literati types that made up the panel of judges, but come now, he's not the only top-notch writer out there. Personally, I would have bumped DeLillo's White Noise into the top position; Underworld is great and all, but White Noise, to me, is far more focused, precise and effective. (Meghan O'Rourke has a great piece at Slate that discusses the lack of "small" novels in the Times' list of winners & nominees.)

One good thing about these lists is that they can turn you on to books and authors that have never crossed your radar before; I'd never heard of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale before, for example. Another attribute is that they can get discussions going about the many deserving writers that didn't make the cut; some that came immediately to mind when scanning the list included, among others, Thomas Pynchon, Stanley Elkin, John Barth, William T. Vollmann, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon, T. C. Boyle and Jonathan Lethem, who've all published some great works in the last quarter-century (and that's just for starters). The flipside, however, is that listmaking is a double-edged sword, buttressing already-established writers' reputations while shoving others even further towards the fringes. Instead of making a list that's all about everyone's idea of "the best," why not try putting together a list focusing on the most underappreciated works of American literature in the last 25 years?

Are the selections safe choices? Maybe, maybe not. Times critic A. O. Scott wrote an excellent companion essay to the list which illustrated its inherent pitfalls and made a number of prescient points about the state of American literature. I'll end this with Scott's thoughts on the general thrust of the selections:

We - Americans, writers, American writers - seem often to be a tribe of mavericks dreaming of consensus. Our mythical book is the one that will somehow include everything, at once reflecting and by some linguistic magic dissolving our intractable divisions and stubborn imperfections. The American literary tradition is relatively young, and it stands in perpetual doubt of its own coherence and adequacy - even, you might say, of its own existence. Such anxiety fosters large, even utopian ambitions. A big country demands big books. To ask for the best work of American fiction, therefore, is not simply - or not really - to ask for the most beautifully written or the most enjoyable to read. We all have our personal favorites, but I suspect that something other than individual taste underwrites most of the choices here. The best works of fiction, according to our tally, appear to be those that successfully assume a burden of cultural importance. They attempt not just the exploration of particular imaginary people and places, but also the illumination of epochs, communities, of the nation itself. America is not only their setting, but also their subject.

Author profile: Stanley Elkin

Not long ago, a friend gave me a copy of Stanley Elkin’s novel A Bad Man. I’d never heard of him before; a number of his books have been republished by Dalkey Archive Press, but they’re not easily found everywhere. On the cover of the Avon trade paperback edition is, strangely, a quote taken from the novel itself:

They came to a last steel door. The guard moved Feldman against the wall with the muzzle of his machine gun. “Fix your tie,” he said, “or I’ll kill you.”

I’ve never been crazy about this kind of ad hype, but... that’s a good one.

A Bad Man concerns Leo Feldman, a department store owner whose obsessive need to provide everything (everything) for his customers eventually lands him in prison.

That’s about all the plot summary that can be managed, because Elkin’s narrative weaves off the tracks of reality around page 10 and realigns itself every once in a while, just to catch its breath. The prison is run by a Byzantine permission system that changes from inmate to inmate (and guard to guard). Feldman, upon arrival, is dressed in a blue “fool’s suit” (thus identifying him as a bad man); later he finds himself amidst a dinner party hosted by the warden; even later, he finds himself amidst the warden’s wife. Said warden reigns, godlike, over the prison, and seems to have chosen Feldman to be his special project.

It’s all very strange, and gloriously well-done at that; Elkin’s prose zigzags and corkscrews, his language sharp, his images startling:

There was only the breathing in all the cells. It was a sustained, continuous sigh, the men’s breath going and coming like hissed, sibilant wind. Somewhere down the cellblock he heard a toilet flush. Someone wrenched up phlegm from a sour throat. In their sleep men turned uncomfortably on their narrow cots. Rolling, they groaned. He heard farts, coughs, the clipped, telescoped declarations of dreamed speech. No one was escaping. All cells were locked. They were cornered, all of them. No one could get in.

Elkin was born in New York City in 1930, and apparently suffered from multiple sclerosis for most of his adult life (he died in 1995). Indeed, an attitude that one's own body is the worst prison imaginable permeates: there’s a lengthy sequence in A Bad Man where Feldman straps himself into an electric chair, in a desperate attempt to do what he thinks is the warden’s bidding. Issues of morality and ideology are Elkin’s primary concern; his characters are their own worst enemies, especially when imprisoned, with no one but themselves to answer to.

And the writing! Oh, my, the writing. Funny, prickly, cynical, outlandish. Elkin is a writer’s writer, in the sense that plot takes a backseat to the prismatic expression of ideas. He taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri until his death, and like his contemporaries he viewed the style of the 19th-century novel to be hopelessly out of date in a culture where the threat of total global annihilation is very real. He’s one of those writers whose technique is stronger than his storytelling; you don’t necessarily care what he’s saying, but how he’s saying it. Surrealistic touches in an Elkin novel aren’t as gimmicky as they might be in one by, say, Tom Robbins; Elkin crawls right down to his characters’ levels, however low they might be, and sees, through their eyes, a world run mad by order.

Bibliography:

Boswell: A Modern Comedy (1964)
A Bad Man (1965)
Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers: Stories (1966)
The Dick Gibson Show (1970)
Searches and Seizures: Three Novellas (1973)
The Franchiser (1976)
The Coffee Room (1978) (radio play)
The Living End (1979)
George Mills (1982)
Early Elkin (1985)
The Magic Kingdom (1985)
The Rabbi of Lud (1987)
The Six-Year-Old Man (1988)
The MacGuffin (1991)
Pieces of Soap: Essays (1992)
Van Gogh’s Room at Arles: Three Novellas (1992)
Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995)

Further resources:

“Reading Stanley Elkin” by Rick Moody
September 1974 interview with Stanley Elkin from The Paris Review (PDF)
Encarta entry on Stanley Elkin