Elkin, Stanley (Vol. 6) - Elkin, Stanley 1930–
Elkin, Stanley 1930–
Elkin, an American novelist, short story writer, editor, and critic, writes parodies of contemporary absurdity and violence, aptly called (although he dislikes the term) "black comedies," in which he "deluges his readers with a Niagara of words—all controlled by a virtuoso." (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)
Its awareness of the World has ruefully lurid consequences for the Self in Stanley Elkin's Searches and Seizures, three short novels which may be related in the way Elkin's prefatory note suggests—i.e., that "each … protagonist is a bachelor…, and each is concerned … with death." In fact, each story is the richly comic detailing of a "search" that is rewarded, not with its desired object, but with a painfully unanticipated revelation (a "seizure"), teaching the searcher what he has not wished to learn. Experience is a mean son-of-a-bitch, the sly Stanley Elkin implies; you...
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