A grand and startling work of American historyAmerica was founded, we're taught in school, by the Pilgrims and other Puritans escaping religious persecution in Europe--an austere and pious lot who established a culture that remained pure and uncorrupted u
It’s never easy being rich: endless tax avoidance, the Sisyphean search for reliable domestic staff, the never-ending burden of surly stares from the Great Sea of the Unwashed as one goes about one’s rightful business. Toughest of all is simply keepin
Brimming with Elkin's comic brilliance and singular wordplay, The Magic Kingdom tells the story of Eddy Bale, who, determined to learn from the ghastly experience of his son's long, drawn-out death, decides to raise enough money to take seven terminally i
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, she inadv
In Searches & Seizures, Elkin tells the story of the criminal, the lovelorn, and the grieving, each searching desperately for fulfillment, while on the verge of receiving much more than they bargained for. Infused with Elkin's signature wit and richly
Breaking the law in a foolhardy attempt to accommodate his customers, unscrupulous department store owner Leo Feldman finds himself in jail and at the mercy of the warden, who tries to break Leo of his determination to stay bad.
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 Poetics for Bu
Boswell is Stanley Elkin's first and funniest novel: the comic odyssey of a twentieth-century groupie who collects celebrities as his insurance policy against death. James Boswell--strong man, professional wrestler (his most heroic match is with the Angel
A quintessential Elkin protagonist, Ellerbee is a good husband, a good employer, a good sport who cares greatly about his fellow human beings--until he is killed during a senseless liquor-store hold-up. Suddenly smote by a deity as indifferent as history,
