The Dick Gibson Show (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) - Softcover

Elkin, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564781984 ISBN 13: 9781564781987

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2009

Synopsis

Look who's on the "Dick Gibson Radio Show": Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline - except for cloud cover and fog banks"). Bernie Perk, the burning pharmacist. Henry Harper, the nine-year old orphan millionaire, terrified of being adopted. The woman whose life revolves around pierced lobes. An evil hypnotist. Swindlers. Con-men. And Dick Gibson himself. Anticipating talk radio and its crazed hosts, Stanley Elkin creates a brilliant comic world held together by American manias and maniacs in all their forms, and a character who perfectly understands what Americans want and gives it to them.

About this title

Review:

"Stanley Elkin's third novel, The Dick Gibson Show...squeezes the blackheads behind the ears of your imagination; it's a Diane Arbus walk on the unreconciled side. It's among the most powerful and funny American novels I know....it's worth noting how fully this novel, which is set mostly in the two decades after World War II, anticipates the daily purge that is the internet, its mille-feuille layers of outrage and heartbreak....The contents of Elkin's novel leave you a bit sick. His talent leaves you wasted, too. This book is a landslide of language, and it's unfair, somehow, that so many gifts were bestowed on one writer..."--Dwight Garner "New York Times, American Beauties column "

"This is Elkin's third novel and his best--a funny, melancholy, frightening, scabrous, absolutely American compendium that may turn out to be our classics about radio."--Joseph McElroy "New York Times Book Review "

About the Author:

Stanley Elkin (1930-1995) was an award-winning author of novels, short stories, and essays. Born in the Bronx, Elkin received his BA and PhD from the University of Illinois and in 1960 became a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis where he taught until his death. His critically acclaimed works include the National Book Critics Circle Award-winners George Mills (1982) and Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995), as well as the National Book Award finalists The Dick Gibson Show (1972), Searches and Seizures (1974), and The MacGuffin (1991). His book of novellas, Van Gogh's Room at Arles, was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1564781984
• ISBN 13: 9781564781987
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 335