Pieces of Soap Essays [Paperback]

Stanley Elkin was one of our great American writers. Adivine exploiter of the idiocies and intricacies of our language, as JohnIrving put it, and nowhere is that more clear than this collection of essays,which find Elkin wresting hilarity and heartbreak from the most unlikely ofsources.??Weird and spirited . . . the constant running through Elkins essays is the thrill they convey ofElkin's inimitable language is an exuberant blend of high allusions and colloquial registers, as bounce-and-pop and it is stop-and-go. His sentences can contain, on the same page, wonderful one-off puns (he refers to remainder shelves as has bins ) and a stretch of boisterous brilliance . . . .Stanley Elkin is no ordinary genius of language, laughter, and the irresistible American idiom; he is anMr. Elkin's world is a wonderland of language. No writer commands words more artfully than Mr. Elkin at his best.Elkin is one of America's great tragicomic geniuses.Brilliant . . .His sentences are long riffs of jazz; the words swarm and gather; the prose is exuberantly betroped, exhilaratinglyNot since James Joyce, perhaps, has there been a better serious funny writer than Stanley Elkin . . .a dazzling master of language.It's raw energy that Elkin loves . . . He's Ahab smashing through the mask with jokes. Grizzly reality is his straight man.A divine exploiter of the idiocies and intricacies of our language.How does Stanley Elkin make magic, book after book?Well, sentence after sentence, word after word, is how. He is an irreplaceable treasure.Pushing the envelope has always been Stanley Elkin's stock-in-trade . . . .Stanley Elkins writing is often memorably absurdist and can beWith a wickedly witty touch, Elkins essays takes readers on a tour ofAmerican life in the 20th century.