Van Gogh’s Room at Arles (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Stanley Elkin
- First Published: 1993
- Type of Work: Novellas
- Time of Work: Late twentieth century
- Setting: The United States, England, and France
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Politics, Marriage, Antiheroes, Divorce, Disabilities or physically challenged persons, Patriotism, Miscarriage
- Locales: France, United States, England
One day, Jack Schiff, a political geographer at a large but unnamed American university and main character in “Her Sense of Timing,” the first of the three novellas in Stanley Elkin’s triptych Van Gogh’s Room at ArIes, wakes up and finds that Claire, his wife of thirty-six years, is leaving him. The most immediate effect on Schiff involves his struggle to get up unaided from his wheelchair and down the stairs, for this Jack is not the Giant Killer (and not the Ripper either, his verbal slicings aside) but Jack the cripple, victim of a neurological disorder, perhaps...
[The entire page is 1999 words long]
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