The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin
National Book Award finalist: 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.
“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 *
"A divine exploiter of the idiocies and intricacies of our language." * John Irving *
"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 *
"A divine exploiter of the idiocies and intricacies of our language." * John Irving *
"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 *
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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781564781987 |
| ISBN 10 | 1564781984 |
| Title | The Dick Gibson Show |
| Author | Stanley Elkin |
| Series | American Literature |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Dalkey Archive Press |
| Year published | 1999-01-14 |
| Number of pages | 335 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |