I read 203 books in 2011, or, on average, a little more than one book every two days. You would think I would be burnt out, and I am a little, but, as trials go, it was strictly Judge Wapner presiding. Small stuff. (I don’t want you to think I’ve got a big head or [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Stanley Elkin’
A Year of Reading
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ben Lerner, Brian Oliu, Cormac McCarthy, Erik Anderson, Francis Levy, How to Write a Sentence, Judge Wapner, Leaving the Atocha Station, LeVar Burton, Logorrhea, Pro Wrestling, Reading Rainbow, Seven Days in Rio, So You Know It's Me, Stanley Elkin, Suttree, The Magic Kingdom, The Poetics of Trespass on December 31, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Guest Post: W.F. Lantry Remembering Stanley Elkin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Stanley Elkin, W.F. Lantry on May 2, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Stanley Elkin: Fiction as a Form of Mathematics By W.F. Lantry So there I was, just inside the Beltway, watching some popular movie the other day. When you’re writing a novel, there’s a lot to be said for watching movies from the same genre, and besides, the heroine was pretty. Anyway, at one point, the [...]
Guest Post: Hilma Wolitzer on Stanley Elkin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Hilma Wolitzer, Stanley Elkin, Summer and Reading, The Rabbi of Lud on April 25, 2011 | 2 Comments »
It was such glorious fun to be Stanley Elkin’s friend as well as his reader. He was always wonderfully irreverent and free of sentimentality. Hence the questionably qualified rabbi (in The Rabbi of Lud) who attends an offshore yeshiva in the Maldive Islands, and likens the services of a “Traveling Minyan” to Meals-on Wheels and [...]
Reading Stanley Elkin’s Searches and Seizures: “The Condominium”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged "The Falling Girl", “The Condominium”, Big Other, Dino Buzzati, John Madera, Searches and Seizures, Stanley Elkin on April 18, 2011 | 19 Comments »
“The Condominium,” the third and final novella in Stanley Elkin’s Searches and Seizures, features another rather garrulous “hero,” this time Marshall Preminger, a thirty-seven-year-old virgin, who describes himself as “ripe for conventional, even classical, introspection, a cliché of a man” (294), a man who, upon the unexpected death of his father, inherits a condominium, which [...]
Reading Stanley Elkin’s Searches and Seizures: “The Making of Ashenden”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ken Emerson, Leslie Epstein, Rafi Zabor, Stanley Elkin, The Bear Comes Home, The Making of Ashenden on April 10, 2011 | 10 Comments »
Ken Emerson, in his rather fine article “The Indecorous, Rabelaisian, Convoluted Righteousness of Stanley Elkin” (March 3, 1991) writes: Elkin, no lover of those writers he has called “the Minimalistas,” when advised by an editor that “less is more,” retorted, “I don’t believe less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that [...]
Reading Stanley Elkin’s Searches and Seizures: On “The Bailbondsman”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged "The Art of Fiction", “The Bailbondsman”, Big Other, Henry James, John Madera, Searches and Seizures, Stanley Elkin, William Gass on April 4, 2011 | 15 Comments »
If you’ve been following along with us here at Big Other, you know that in January we read and discussed Tom McCarthy’s C (more here and here), followed that up with Mary Caponegro’s The Complexities of Intimacy (more here, here, and here) and Manuel Puig’s Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (more here, here, here, and here), [...]
A Good Man Gives Me A Bad Man
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Bad Man, Big Other, David C. Dougherty, John Madera, Sam Lipsyte, Sam Lipsyte and David C. Dougherty on Stanley Elkin, Stanley Elkin on March 1, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Tonight, I went with Greg Gerke to an event honoring the ever-inimitable Stanley Elkin. After a short documentary of Elkin’s life (featuring soundbites from his wife, daughter, William Gass, and others), Sam Lipsyte and David C. Dougherty weighed in. Lipsyte discussed the might and mythos of Elkin, and remarked on the effect that Elkin’s prose [...]
1 of 100
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Dalkey Archive Press, Stanley Elkin on November 8, 2010 | 13 Comments »
I’m giving a lot of thought to the 100 titles I’m going to order from Dalkey Archive Press this year. I think I’ve just found my #1: Stanley Elkin’s Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers. Here’s an excerpt from “A Poetics for Bullies”: Suddenly I raise my arms and he stops. I feel a power [...]
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Announcing the Book Club Schedule!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, Big Other, C, Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, Djuna Barnes, Gilgamesh, Gordon Lish, Helen Vendler, John Barth, John Gardner, John Hawkes, John Maier, Lyn Hejinian, Manuel Puig, Mary Caponegro, Mo Yan, My Life, Nightwood, Peru, Searches and Seizures: 3 Novellas, Stanley Elkin, The Complexities of Intimacy, The Sotweed Factor, Tom McCarthy, Travesty on December 26, 2010 | 9 Comments »
The votes are in, and the winner of the poll for the first book to be discussed in the Big Other Book Club is Tom McCarthy’s C. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, hailed by many and knocked by maybe even more, McCarthy describes the book as dealing with technology and mourning. I’m excited to have, as [...]
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