The MacGuffin (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Stanley Elkin
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: The 1990’s
- Setting: An unnamed city in the American Midwest
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Midwest, Adultery, Fantasy, Imagination, Mysteries, Popular culture, Terrorism or terrorists, Espionage or spies, 1990’s, Diseases
- Locales: Midwest (U.S.)
Characters Discussed
Robert Druff, also called Bob and Bobbo, the city commissioner of streets. At the age of fifty-eight, wearing his ill-fitting clothes and suffering from heart disease, a collapsed lung, and poor circulation, Druff finds himself “on the downhill side of destiny.” He swallows Valium to calm himself and chews coca leaves to create a sense of “restored obsession,” the antidote to what he otherwise experiences as a vaguely defined loss of force (a strange malady given that Druff never had much force to lose). Alternately overbearing and self-deprecating,...
[The entire page is 956 words long]
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