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Biography
American

Stanley Elkin

1930 — 1995

Stanley Elkin was an American novelist and short-story writer whose baroque, extravagant prose style and mordant comic vision make him one of the most distinctive voices in post-war American fiction. His novels — including A Bad Man (1967), The Dick Gibson Show (1971), The Franchiser (1976), George Mills (1982), and Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995) — are sustained performances of rhetorical virtuosity. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award twice.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Stanley Lawrence Elkin (1930–1995) was born on 11 May 1930 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Chicago. He studied at the University of Illinois and taught at Washington University in St. Louis from 1960 until his death. He suffered from multiple sclerosis for the last decades of his life.

Life and Career

Elkin was a writer’s writer — passionately admired by other novelists (Saul Bellow, William Gass, Robert Coover) and almost entirely unknown to the general reading public. His fiction is driven by voice: long, extravagant, rhetorically elaborate sentences that take on a life of their own. Plot in Elkin’s novels is secondary to the energy of the prose itself.

The Franchiser (1976) — about Ben Flesh, a man who franchises every conceivable American business — is his masterpiece: a delirious, despairing comedy about American consumer culture. George Mills (1982, National Book Critics Circle Award) — about a thousand years of failure in one family — and The Magic Kingdom (1985) — about a trip to Disney World for terminally ill children — are equally extraordinary. Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995, National Book Critics Circle Award) — his last novel, about an elderly widow in a Miami condo — is his most humane.

Major Works and Themes

Elkin wrote about ordinary people trapped in extraordinary rhetorical performances of their own making. His characters talk — endlessly, brilliantly, desperately — and their talk is the substance of the fiction. His great subject is American commerce, American hucksterism, and the way American life is constituted by the selling and buying of things and experiences.

Key Works

  • The Franchiser (1976)
  • George Mills (1982) — National Book Critics Circle Award
  • Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995) — National Book Critics Circle Award

Collecting Elkin

Boswell (1964, Random House) — the debut — brings $30–$80. Elkin’s books had small print runs. First editions are relatively scarce but not expensive, reflecting his small readership. He died in 1995; signed copies are scarce. Any signed first edition has value beyond the book’s market price due to rarity.