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Shouting down the silence : a biography of Stanley Elkin / David C. Dougherty

Author
Dougherty, David C.
Published
Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2010]
Copyright Date
©2010
Physical Description
1 online resource
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Language Note
English.
Contents
Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. A Sum of Private Frequencies -- 2. When Stanley Elkin Was a Little Boy: New York and Chicago, 1930-48 -- 3. College, Graduate School, and the Army, 1948-57 -- 4. Family Crises, Graduate School, and a Literary Career, 1957-60 -- 5. Become a Strong Man: St. Louis, Europe, First Base, Full Houses, and the Big Time, 1960-65 -- 6. Convicted of His Character: Kibitzers, A Bad Man, Additions, and Catastrophe, 1965-68, 7. Strange Displacements of the Ordinary: Recovery and The Dick Gibson Show, 1968-708. BlessÃ?d Form: Novellas, a Sabbatical Year Abroad, and a Death Sentence, 1971-73 -- 9. Making America Look Like America: Hollywood Beckons, a Breakthrough Novel, and a Cane, 1974-77 -- 10. Heaven and Hell, St. Louis and Mexico, the First Crusade, and South America: Life's Greatest Hits and a Major Disappointment, 1978-82 -- 11. Disney World and Alaskan Rabbis: A Masterpiece, a Flop, the Elkin Essay, and More Bad Medical News, 1983-88, and 12. But I Am Getting Ahead of Myself: Back to the Movies, Another Trilogy, More Awards, and the Last Years, 1989-9413. The Stanley Elkin Chair: The Silence Descends, Posthumous Fiction, and Awards -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary
This book presents the first complete biography of Stanley Elkin, a preeminent novelist who consistently won high marks from critics but whose complexities of style seemed destined to elude the popular acclaim he hoped to attain. From the publication of his second novel, A Bad Man, in 1967 to his death in 1995, Elkin was tormented by the desire for both material and artistic success. ;; Elkin's novels were taught in colleges and universities, his fiction received high praise from critics and reviewers (two of his novels won National Book Critics Circle Awards), and his short stories were widely anthologized--and yet he was unable to achieve renown beyond the avant-garde, or to escape the stigma of being an "academic writer." He wanted to be Faulkner, but he had trouble being Elkin.;; Drawing on personal interviews and an intimate knowledge of Elkin's life and works, David C. Dougherty captures Elkin's early life as well as his later career at Washington University in St. Louis. A frequent participant at the annual Bread Loaf Writers' conference, he was the friend--and sometime antagonist--of other important writers, particularly Saul Bellow, William Gass, Howard Nemerov, and Robert Coover. This book details the ambition, the success, the friction, and the foibles of a writer who won fame, but not the fame he wanted.
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Genre(s)
ISBN
9780252091018 (epub)
0252091019
1283028891
9781283028899
9780252035081 (cloth ; alk. paper)
0252035089 (cloth ; alk. paper)
9786613028891
6613028894
Digital File Characteristics
data file
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 43168286