The Dick Gibson Show
The Dick Gibson Show

Author: Stanley Elkin

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1453204326

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A radio host’s rise is the fodder for this “funny, melancholy, frightening . . . absolutely American” National Book Award finalist (The New York Times Book Review). Since childhood, Dick Gibson has longed for a successful radio career to make him a household name. Seeking to hone his craft, Dick travels from stations in Nebraska and New Jersey to the Armed Forces Radio in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War, interviewing crooks, con artists, and hypnotists along the way. His show ignites the imaginations of all who listen to it—until one fateful night when a studio guest’s irresistible influence on Dick and all those listening to him will change their lives forever. Spirited and compelling, The Dick Gibson Show is a laugh-out-loud journey through the world of talk radio and a compulsively readable account of one man’s descent into the dark echo chamber of American media. This ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate and from the Stanley Elkin archives at Washington University in St. Louis.

George Mills
George Mills

Author: Stanley Elkin

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 1453204180

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An age-old family curse fuels this National Book Critics Circle Award winner: “Elkin’s imagination should be declared a national landmark” (Paul Auster). Since the time of the First Crusade, every generation of the Mills family has been consigned by fate to an unfulfilling, servile existence. And each successive Mills has had a son, George, to perpetuate the family plight through history. Whether a stable hand in feudal Europe or a prisoner in an Ottoman harem, each George Mills falls prey to his hereditary misfortune—until the modern George Mills threatens to reverse this fate once and for all. Written with penetrating insight and wit, George Mills is an engrossing story of one man’s salvation, and an unforgettable defense of free will in even the most overwhelming of circumstances. This ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate and from the Stanley Elkin archives at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Spectators
The Spectators

Author: Jennifer DuBois

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0812995880

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Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery--both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie's past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface. In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man's downfall through the perspectives of two spectators--Cel, Mattie's skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past. With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention--and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.

The Magic Kingdom
The Magic Kingdom

Author: Mo

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2014-08-05

Total Pages: 37

ISBN-13: 1496925165

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In a house near a beautiful forest, a new prince is born, living close to the mansion of his grandfather, the King. The prince moves to the city as a very young child, and there he learns how to use magic and how to play many different games. When he returned to the mansion that he had visited as a baby, he soon realizes something wonderful: his crayons have magically become rainbows! Using magic, he sets out to make the world a perfect place. In this children’s book, a young prince discovers that the reward of magic can make him as great as he wants to be and allows him to work to make the world a perfect place.

The MacGuffin
The MacGuffin

Author: Stanley Elkin

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781564782236

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As he's chauffeured about in his official limousine, aging City commissioner of Streets Bobbo Druff comes to a frightening realization: he's lost force, the world has started to condescend to him. His once fear-inspiring figure has become everyone's "little old lady." In retaliation, Druff constructs a paranoid plot, his "MacGuffin" within which)he believes) everyone is out to get him. with unabashed enthusiasm Druff starts an illicit affair (in order to incriminate himself), instigates fights with his employees, invents lies for his family- in short, everythingything in his power to create a world in which he is placed safely and firmly at the scandalous center.

Major Characters in American Fiction
Major Characters in American Fiction

Author: Jack Salzman

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2014-09-23

Total Pages: 1591

ISBN-13: 1466881933

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Major Characters in American Fiction is the perfect companion for everyone who loves literature--students, book-group members, and serious readers at every level. Developed at Columbia University's Center for American Culture Studies, Major Characters in American Fiction offers in-depth essays on the "lives" of more than 1,500 characters, figures as varied in ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, and experience as we are. Inhabiting fictional works written from 1790 to 1991, the characters are presented in biographical essays that tell each one's life story. They are drawn from novels and short stories that represent ever era, genre, and style of American fiction writing--Natty Bumppo of The Leatherstocking Tales, Celie of The Color Purple, and everyone in between.

Comic Sense
Comic Sense

Author: Thomas Pughe

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 3034877463

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The idea for this study came to me in the course of my reading of innova tive US-American! fiction of the last three decades. I observed that much of it is cast in the comic mode - or, more precisely, that there seems to be in contemporary fiction an affinity between 'innovation' and 'the comic' and that this affinity, furthermore, appears to be characteristic of postmo dernism. It is obvious, at the same time, that comic has become an elusive and, more often than not, a disputable category. Frederick Karl, in his sur vey of American Fictions 1940-1980, maintains, for instance, that much comic writing consists in ridicule that lacks deeper intellectual and cul tural roots. "Wit and mockery," he notes, "by themselves have little lasting value. Even in the best of such fiction, Gravity's Rainbow, one is made aware of attenuated skits stiched onto previous segments, rather than baked in by a defined point of view. " (Karl: 27) Such assessments of course challenge my view that the comic is in significant ways connected with what is innovative in postmodernist US-American fiction. Yet the term comic -or related terms like humour, parody, irony and so fort- is regularly and heavily employed in discussions or reviews of con temporary fiction.

Mrs. Ted Bliss
Mrs. Ted Bliss

Author: Stanley Elkin

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1453204229

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National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: This funny, poignant novel about the misadventures of a Miami Beach widow is “brilliant” (Los Angeles Times). After her beloved husband dies of cancer, Dorothy Bliss is consigned to a life of tedium, waiting out her remaining years in a Miami beachside community shared precariously by its Jewish and Latino residents. When Dorothy attends a series of parties intended to lighten the community’s racial tensions, she is unwittingly pulled into a world of drug smuggling, con artistry, and underground gambling—and a series of adventures that will renew her passion for life. At once heartfelt and hilarious, Mrs. Ted Bliss is a captivating novel of an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances, reconciling the regrets of her past and rediscovering adventure in the twilight of her life. This ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate and from the Stanley Elkin archives at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Rabbi of Lud
The Rabbi of Lud

Author: Stanley Elkin

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781564782700

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Surrounded by cemeteries in the flatlands of New Jersey, the small town of Lud is sustained by the business of death. In fact, with no synagogue and no congregation, Rabbi Jerry Goldkorn has only one true responsibility: to preside over burial services for Jews who pass away in the surrounding cities. But after the Arctic misadventures that led him to Lud, he wouldn't want to live (or die) anywhere else. As the only living child in Lud, his daughter Connie has a different opinion of this grisly city, and she will do anything to get away from it--or at least liven it up a bit. Things get lively indeed when Connie testifies to meeting the Virgin Mary for a late-night romp through the local graveyards.