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William Gass on Gaddis, Calvino, Bernhard and More
In his Paris Review interview from 1977, William Gass riffs on the writers he admires: INTERVIEWER Who are some living novelists you respect? GASS Well, the question leaves out so many dead ones who...
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Barry Hannah/Stanley Elkin (Books Acquired, 5.29.2013)
I was thrilled to find a somewhat tattered copy of Barry Hannah’s Geronimo Rex, after trolling the [huge, unorganized] “HA” section of my favorite used bookstore. Years ago, I found like seven of...
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Books acquired, almost for their covers alone, 4.25.2016 (Elkin, Fine, Michaux)
I swung by my favorite used bookstore this afternoon; it’s right near the grocery store and I needed to pick up some mint and some ricotta. I was hoping to pick up Elena Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant...
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Stanley Elkin and William Gass on the mythic mode, Faulkner, etc.
From Washington University’s marvelous Modern Literature Collection YouTube channel. Tagged: Literature, Stanley Elkin, William Faulkner, William Gass
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How crowded is the universe (Stanley Elkin’s The Franchiser)
“How crowded is the universe,” his godfather said and moved the plasma arm vaguely. “How stuffed to bursting with its cargo of crap. Consider, Ben. You could have been a pencil or the metal band that...
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I conclude now I have no inner resources (Reading/Have Read/Should Write About)
For twenty years now Berryman’s line I conclude now I have no inner resources has been plinking around the inside of my dumb skull. The line is plinking like crazy lately, as I shuffle final exam...
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Three Books
Their Familyby Warren Fine. 1972 first edition hardback from Knopf. Cover illustration by James Grashow; cover design by R.D. Scudellari. I’ll admit I had to have this because of the cover alone,...
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Men will the laws of nature (From Stanley Elkin’s novel The Franchiser)
They drove up to the Broadmoor, a pink Monaco castle at the foot of the Rockies, and he showed her the hotel in a proprietary way, taking her through the nifty Regency public rooms with their beautiful...
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Three Books
The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin. 1983 trade paperback by E.P. Dutton/Obelisk. Cover design by Janet Halverson. I finished Elkin’s The Franchiser this week and started this one this week. The...
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HIC SUNT DODOS! (From Stanley Elkin’s novel The Dick Gibson Show)
The report has come back. It’s official. HIC SUNT DODOS! The dodo is an extinct species of ungainly, flightless bird of the genus Raphus or Didus. Its incubation ground and later its world was the...
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Reading/Have Read/Should Write About
From bottom to top: I had to go hunt through the house for the trio of Hildafolk comics by Luke Pearson because my kids keep swapping them around. We’ve read them a bunch of times now and they are...
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Stanley Elkin reviews Stanley Elkin’s novel The Dick Gibson Show (kinda sorta)
[Ed. note: I finished Stanley Elkin’s 1971 novel The Dick Gibson Show a few days ago. I read The Dick Gibson Show immediately after finishing Elkin’s 1976 novel The Franchiser. I want to write...
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Sixteen books I wish I’d written more about in 2016
I read a lot of great books this year but had a hard time writing full reviews for all of them. These are some of the ones I liked the most. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard I finished Woodcutters just...
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Stanley Elkin/Flann O’Brien (Book acquired and book not acquired, 23 May 2018)
I went to my favorite local bookstore today to pick up my daughter’s sixth-grade required reading list and to offload some books I’ll never read again. I have far too many tasteful trade paperbacks...
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Three Books
The Last Days of Louisiana Red by Ishmael Reed. 1974 first edition hardback from Random House. No designer credited, but the jacket flap indicates that the cover design was “suggested” by Ishmael...
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A Charles Portis miscellany, a signed Stanley Elkin oddity, and Rudolph...
I went to my beloved used bookstore the first three Fridays in February, searching for a few things: novels by Rudolph Wurlitzer (no luck); Titus Alone, the last novel in Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast”...
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Another Postmodernists Dinner
I’ve written about the so-called “Postmodernist Dinner” on this blog before. The 1983 dinner was organized and hosted by Donald Barthelme, and attended by John Barth, William Gaddis, Kurt Vonnegut,...
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John Barth’s brief description of Donald Barthelme’s so-called postmodernist...
Photograph from “The Postmodernists Dinner,” 1983 by Jill Krementz (b. 1940) In John Barth’s 1989 New York Times eulogy for Donald Barthelme, Barth gives a brief description of two so-called...
View ArticleGod gave a gala | Stanley Elkin
God gave a gala, a levee at the Lord’s. All Heaven turned out. “Gimme,” He said, that old time religion.” His audience beamed. They cheered, they ate it up. They nudged each other in Paradise. “What...
View ArticleI never found my audience | Stanley Elkin
Bodies rose to the surface of the seas and began swimming. They were released from faded, colorless flags, stove ships, hidden pilings where they had snagged for years. They came up out of shoals and...
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