Mrs. Ted Bliss

by Stanley Elkin, Chirs Lehmann (Introduction)

Published posthumously in 1995, Mrs. Ted Bliss tells the story of an eighty-two-year-old widow starting life anew after the death of her husband. As Dorothy Bliss learns to cope with the mundane rituals of life in a Florida retirement community, she inadvertently becomes involved with a drug kingpin trying to use her as a front for his operations. Combining a comic plot with a deep concern for character, Elkin ends his career with a vivid portrait of a woman overcoming loss, a woman who is both recognizable and as unique as Elkin's other famous characters.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Humor, 20th Century, Unfinished, American, Literature

294 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Stanley Lawrence Elkin was a Jewish American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.

During his career, Elkin published ten novels, two volumes of novellas, two books of short stories, a collection of essays, and one (unproduced) screenplay. Elkin's work revolves about American pop culture, which it portrays in innumerable darkly comic variations. Characters take full precedence over plot.

His language throughout is extravagant and exuberant, baroque and flowery, taking fantastic flight from his characters' endless patter. "He was like a jazz artist who would go off on riffs," said critic William Gass. In a review of George Mills, Ralph B. Sipper wrote, "Elkin's trademark is to tightrope his way from comedy to tragedy with hardly a slip."

About the influence of ethnicity on his work Elkin said he admired most "the writers who are stylists, Jewish or not. Bellow is a stylist, and he is Jewish. William Gass is a stylist, and he is not Jewish. What I go for in my work is language."

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls]

It is hard to be too disparaging about this novel, seeing Stanley Elkin wrote it in the last few years of his life, probably in the fleeting moments when his crippling multiple sclerosis let up long enough so he could type or handwrite. It is an heroic act that in his last years he chose to power through and work rather than let this horrible wasting illness vegetize him—a man of restless spirits and comic energy. Still, we separate the work from its writer and its composition. Mrs. Ted Bliss is not a good novel. Despite quotes from heavyweights Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow and Michiko Kakutani and the fact it won National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995, it barely scrapes a pass. I managed 160pp before shutdown. Reasons? Bland prose lacking all the linguistic showmanship Elkin is famous for. A tired and unamusing plot centred around an old woman whose past is explored in long tedious expository patches. The novel has no sense of pace, no lively characters, no real structure . . . seemingly not much life. Given Elkin’s circumstances this seems pretty sad.

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mrs. Ted Bliss is a recent widow living in a Florida retirement community when the novel opens. She is a mix of naivety and shrewdness. Over a decade, we watch her get involved with South American drug lords and the shyster who used to be her husband’s partner, come to terms with her son’s death and reconcile with her daughter-in-law. This is described as humorous, but, as usual, I missed the humor. The use of dialect is fantastic and the dialogue is strong. The narrator of my audio book was outstanding. This novel relies on ethnic stereotypes and I suspect it is these stereotypes that were the source of the comedy when it was first published. Had I read it 30 years ago, I probably would have enjoyed it, but today it made me cringe.

[Sheri · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, the main character is a spineless elderly woman (starts when she is in her 60s and ends when she is 82) with (admitedly) no interests. She worships men (simply because they are men) and spends her free time taking baths. A few of Elkin's comments about the necessity of having interests in life and the repetitive nature of life are interesting. A few of the moments (especially the debate between Dorothy and Ellen about who is chief mourner) are true to life, yet comical. Overall, though it was hard to swallow a (even short) book about a main character who is not appealing in any way. Maybe if I was an old Jewish guy I would have liked her...is she Elkin's Venus?

Added: morning of June 15, 2023:
--I have become senile or my goodreads account was hacked. It does happen upon occasion that I pick a book from the library and when I go to put it on my "currently reading" goodreads shelf, it comes up showing a review and hah! turns out I already read it. Typically when this happens, I sigh with disappointment (these are almost always books that recieved poor "scores"...I didn't like them, didn't remember them, but was once again lured by their titles/covers/authors). And I just send it back to the library without re-reading it.

I have been struggling through this novel for the past week and literally spent yesterday afternoon complaining about how I had to finish this damn thing today because I am so sick of it; I did manage to finish last night and got up this morning to draft a review only to find...a review! (see above; the paragraph prior to today's date).

Sigh. I am not sure I understand how I managed to put this on my "to-read" without noticing that I had read it back in 2012 (admittedly, that is a LOOOONG time ago, and I am in fact old)...but, hence, I am senile or my account was hacked.

Since I would have given it a 1 star and my review above does, in fact, mostly sum up what I was going to say, I have to believe that I wrote it. I just can't believe that I got through the entire novel (a second time!) without knowing that I had read it before. I'ma gonna just take that as testiment to Elkin's mundacity: he is so boring, so repetitive, and so bland that nothing rang familiar.

And now that you all have the background that is the surprise of my day, I will add a bit to the actual review:

Reading this book this week alongside of Blue Collar Aristocrats did illuminate some of the male/female stuff a bit: The novel is set after Ted (Mr. Bliss) dies and Dorothy (Ms. Bliss) struggles to become independent; it spans about 20 years, from when Dorothy is early 60s until early 80s; and the last of it is in the early 1990s...so running from roughly 1970-1990...Dorothy is the oldest of the women that LeMasters was speaking with back in the bar in Middleton (a short 2.5 hr drive from Dorothy's Chicago). Dorothy, however, is not a real woman (LeMasters, remember is dealing with REAL people), but Elkin's creation. As such, she espouses what MEN want, not what women want or think; she came across as the world's oldest Barbie doll and for this reader felt very much to be the mouthpiece of some of the men in LeMasters bar....those old fellows who see change and wish to go back; the ones who feel that women were "given too much" and have "taken control" and need to be "put in their place".

I felt like Elkin was trying to present the picture of an ignorant, happy, slave (if one is satisfied with their lot and does not feel supressed, why disrupt their happiness) as functional and legitimate, but 30 years after this was written (and 50 years after then concepts have been considered anything like legitimate--other than in Afghanistan) it falls flat. I just cringed over and over; in my mind, Dorothy was nothing but an empty blow-up sex doll that Elkin was trying to use as a ventriloquist's doll to spout this stuff. In other words, Ekin is an extremely sexist man wishing to revert to previous models of female behavior. And the fact that this book won National Books Critic Circle Award in 1995 just leaves me wanting to vomit.

Or he is just trying to be funny. But I didn't find it that way (apparantly either time I read it). Having said all of that (most of which ya'll probably didn't need to hear), I will leave you with a few of the most egregious quotes so you can see what has me so fired up:
"Thrilled retroactively who'd never met a man who hadn't impresse her, swept away by men, not in any sexual or romantic sense but rendered dumbstruck by all the ways they seemed to fill up the world."
"Women honored the men who put food on the table, who provided the table on which the food was put, and the men saved them. That was the trade off. Men saved them....Women owed it to them to be good-looking, they owed it to them that he shade of their dresses did not clash with the shade of their suits, to hold their shapes and do their level best to keep up ethere reflections in mirrors. It wasn't vanity. It was duty."

[Dan Witte · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mrs. Ted Bliss of its title – Dorothy from Chicago, by way of Russia as a child emigree, and now finally retired and widowed in south Florida – is as rich, complex, and satisfying a fictional character as I’ve ever encountered. This is a book about her, as one might assume, but in all its literary splendor it’s about family, love, death and, as we ultimately learn, obligation. I’m not an expert on Stanley Elkin, but this is the fourth book of his I’ve read in the last six months or so, and while I enjoyed the others for different reasons, this book really stands apart. It is at turns funny and poignant, often within the same passage or sentence, and through Mrs. Ted Bliss and a handful of other characters the narrator provides a masterful view of what it means to grow old, surrounded by the psychic weight of memory and loss while still daring to be alive in the present. I don’t know why it took me so long to start reading his work, but I’m grateful to have discovered Elkin, as each of his books has offered a unique reading experience, and each has made me laugh and reflect. On the surface he may appear irreverent and cynical, and to varying degrees he certainly seems to have a love/hate relationship with his subjects, but I’ve come to believe he is as faithful and true to them as any author I’ve read. I know many commenters consider this his finest book, a tour de force, even a masterpiece, and I find myself so amazed by Mrs. Ted Bliss, the book and the character, as to agree with all the hyperbole.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining, humane, humorous, well written, character based novel about an old widow, living by herself in a 7th floor apartment in Miami, Florida, during the 1980s and early 1990s. We learn about Mrs. Ted Bliss, (Dorothy), her family, and people she associates with. She is an independent, Jewish, set in her ways who is not afraid to speak about what is on her mind.

I particularly like the author’s humorous writing style.

Here is an example of his writing:

“She spent endless hours (three or four a day) in her kitchen, preparing food, doing dishes till they sparkled, mopping the floor, scouring the sink, wiping down the stove; yet she had never been a very good cook, only driven taskmistress, seldom varying her menus and ….never entirely comfortable outside the door to her apartment…..”

Here are a couple of examples of the author’s sense of humour:
“..lovers kneading lotions and sunblock into one another’s flesh like a sort of sexual first aid”
Dorothy, in responding to her daughter-in-law asking whether there are any good health food restaurants nearby, states, “When I eat out, I eat out. I don’t go for a treatment.”

This book won the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award. The author’s books, ‘The Dick Gibson Show’ and ‘The MacGuffin’ are National Book Award finalists. His book, ‘George Mills’ won the 1982 Nation Book Critics Circle Award.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elkin's final novel is one of his strongest, saddest, and funniest, made all the more impressive by the serious health problems he was dealing with as he wrote it. The title character, on first impression, seems unlike every other Elkin protagonist in that she has no hobbies, interests, career, obsessions, passions, or apparent eccentricities. Mrs. Ted Bliss is a widowed Jewish Chicagoan (by way of Russian emigration as a child) homemaker living out her final years in the Florida condominium she and her late husband retired to a decade-plus earlier. She has outlived her husband, friends, and one son, and she spends her days playing cards, watching television, listening to talk radio, mailing birthday and anniversary cards to her children, their spouses, and her grandchildren, tidying up the condo, and attempting to bury her loneliness and grief. An offer to buy her late husband's Buick LeSabre kicks off a years-long odyssey in belated self-discovery, culminating in an incredible final chapter that takes place during Hurricane Andrew. Elkin finds hidden depths, weirdness, and humor in his protagonist and everyone surrounding her, and his concluding sentence strikes at the heart of both Mrs. Ted Bliss and his entire body of work.

[Bill Webster · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are under 55 and not familiar with Don Rickles, Milton Berle or Hennie Youngman, you’re going to struggle with this novel. Mrs. Ted (Dorothy) Bliss is our lead character taking us through the travails of Jewish retirement set in Miami Beach. Being a Floridian myself, I have witnessed the bygone era of Delicatessens like Wolfies and Pumpernicks (RIP), which were the daily scene for many who pilfered the “sweet n low” and pursed the dinner rolls while eating bottomless bowls of kosher pickles and coleslaw. All in all, I would rather reminisce watching the above-mentioned comedians on YouTube.

[Iva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mrs. Bliss may show some dated moments (long distance calls billed by the minute for example) but she is a character worth your time. The picture of condo life in Miami has great appeal and doesn't seem dated and new characters keep populating the novel to keep one engaged. There is humor, strong writing and shows Elkin was a skillful writer. This was his last novel, published posthumously. A strong portrait of aging.

[Allison Hamilton-rohe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Highly do NOT recommend. Main character may be a lovely lady and the depiction of retirees in FL spot on, but the plot made zero sense and I just couldn’t wait for it to be over. Rarely do I dislike a book, so do yourself a favor: National Book Award or no…just skip it! Plus, it took me FOREVER! And I usually whip through books. Just UGh!

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because the personable quality of his genius and his particular gifts as a language wizard make Stanley Elkin seem as though brought to earth precisely to please the likes of me, I must confess some continuing consternation regarding my having come to him later in life than would altogether seem to make much sense. I was aware of him, certainly. I had noted the considerable esteem he generates in his writerly fellows. I think I had made the mistake (almost at an unconscious level) or typing him as a humourist rather than a writer of top-of-the-line literary fiction. He is of course a very, very funny writer. Perhaps I had gotten the wrong idea. Alas, it hardly pays to dwell. I have done an admirable job of catching up the past couple years. Kudos to me. Yes. You see, my first Elkin was the CRIERS & KIBITZERS, KIBITZERS & CRIERS, a collection of early stories, which I read in October of 2016. It is now October of 2018 and I have just completed my sixth Elkin novel. MRS. TED BLISS. His final novel, as it would happen. Though it is probably the least outlandish demonstration of his prodigious brilliance (as a novelist) I have yet encountered, it might be among his most brilliant works in more subterranean terms. When one speaks of the brilliance of Stanley Elkin it is likely that one is primarily speaking of the writing itself. Elkin is a man who utterly dazzles in terms of his fleet execution at the level of the sentence and the paragraph. We often speak of his riffs, as though he were a jazzman no other on his instrument can quite touch. He routinely provokes awe and mirth in tandem. Look at that cat roll! Well, I'll be! Goddamn! I worship Elkin and am always blown away by his gifts, but as a dude who may or may not have once assumed that Elkin was little more than humourist, a kind of pulp paper vaudevillian, I have to also convey that every single one of his novels has indeed had me chuckling aloud to myself at some point during the process of reading it. MRS. TED BLISS is no exception. That being said, I see that the novel does seem to motivate a degree of reticence in many readers. Not his finest hour, quoth a number of them. What I think: taken on its own merits as a stand-alone enterprise, it would be positively outrageous to call MRS. TED BLISS subdued, but as a Stanley Elkin novel, and the last station on the line that was his career, I guess you could say it comes off as somewhat subdued. It is brilliant and outrageous and full of savory schtick, but it is not burning rubber and tossing lit fireworks out the windows the way so many Elkin novels do. I mean, look: it follows THE MACGUFFIN right? A novel that was one uninterrupted coca-leaf-chewing Berserker spree. No. MRS. TED BLISS is something a little different, and perhaps emblematic of what the commentariat are wont to call "late style." What this means, however, is that while I spent less time reading it humbled to the point of big-eyed dumbfoundment by the writing qua writing, sentence to sentence, I found myself admiring more consciously the brilliance of the novel itself both as an exquisite construction and a quasi-philosophical meditation. And don't get me wrong: Elkin never sets a foot wrong and the writing here routinely wows. But this is a novel of great subtlety and uncanny reverberations. It practically calls for deep listening. It certainly encourages a certain level of engagement and thoughtful committedness that it rewards in spades. MRS. TED BLISS is a novel that by necessity has to meet its eponymous little-old-lady protagonist at her level. It situates her, mystified, but nobody's fool, in a world of mystery. In some ways we are perhaps encouraged to think of Miss Marple or Angela Lansbury in MURDER, SHE WROTE, only the world of MRS. TED BLISS is a world in entropy; its mysteries, often ominous or apparently absurd, threaten and encircle, compound, but lead nowhere, certainly never resolve. Living in mystery parallels the imperative to contend with one's mortality, and the lessons are fundamentally spiritual: we must arrive at surrender and acceptance or woe unto us. The comedy here is rich, and it is always at least half working at the level of the heart, but the sense of a profound authorial clarity is what remains most pronounced. Whereas we tend to see the brilliance of Elkin at the level of the sentence and the paragraph, what is finally most profound about MRS. TED BLISS is the relationship between the chapters. It is one of the most remarkably envisioned and constructed novels I have ever read. Though the compounded mysteries may never be resolved, as at a fundamental level they never are in this world (that of each of us), the novel does lead somewhere very decisive indeed. Where does it lead? Bracing clarity. A breathtaking clearness of vision. This is novel as realization. One of the great final literary statements in the pantheon. One of the all time preeminent parting gifts.

[Myles · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had too many digressions and desciption, both of characters and setting. It could have told its story in half the pages, although the story wasn't that interesting either. I wanted to say, "Stop describing Mrs. Ted Bliss's feeling and thoughts; show us, using dialogue and action."

[Mla08080 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin was an enjoyable read. It was kind of a throwback to the Philip Roth, Saul Bellow styles of American literature, depicting the 70s and 80s in Miami Florida where the Jewish people moving from Chicago moved in next to the South American drug lords who moved out of their country. " They were—the Latinos—not only a proud people but a stylish, almost gaudy one. The high heels of the women, the wide, double-breasted, custom suits of the men, lent them a sexy, perky, tango air; sent unmixed signals of something like risk and danger that sailed right over the Jews’ heads." That sounds like it might lead to some interesting plot twists, but really except for the selling of her dead husband's car, Mrs. Ted Bliss has relatively few incidents of drama. The story really just depicts a widow who is hard of hearing in her 80s getting by. We read about h interactions with her children, her daughter in law and an old business partner of her husband's. The novel mostly just reveals Dorothy's inner monologue of her life and memories.
the writing, however, was phenomenal; the sentences fun to read and the descriptions at times hilarious. I would recommend this book and I will look to see other novels from this author.
Lines:
Max had been the manager of Baltimore’s largest hardware store and had a guaranteed three-quarters point participation in net profits before his stroke in 1971 from which, thank God, he was now fully recovered except for a wide grin that was permanently fixed into his face like a brand...“I don’t dare go to funerals, they think I’m laughing,” Max said.

Dorothy was overcome with a feeling so powerful she gasped in astonishment and turned in her seat and looked in the back to see if her husband were sitting there. She was thrown into confusion. It was Ted’s scent, the haunted pheromones of cigarettes and sweat and loss, his over-two-year ownership collected, concentrated in the locked, unused automobile.

Women honored the men who put food on the table, who provided the table on which the food was put, and the men saved them. That was the trade-off. Men saved them. They took them out of awful places like Mrs. Dubow’s and put food on the table and kept all the books. Women owed it to them to be good-looking, they owed it to them that the shade of their dresses did not clash with the shade of their suits, to hold their shapes and do their level best to keep up their reflections in mirrors. It wasn’t vanity, it was duty.

And gathering up her metal detector, her trowel and shovel and hoe, and taking her fine paleontologist’s brush made off down the beach on her own, passing by groups of discrete populations—couples from the hotels stretched out on bathtowels; women older than Dorothy on beach chairs of bright woven plastic, indifferent as stylites, their skin dark as scabs; men, the ancient retired, chilly in suits and ties; girls in thong bathing suits, their teenage admirers trailing behind them like packs of wild dogs; kids, overexcited, wild in the surf, their parents frantically waving their arms like coaches in Little League; waiters, kitchen help, and housekeepers on smoke breaks; small clans of picnickers handing off contraband sandwiches, contraband beer; lovers kneading lotions and sunblock into one another’s flesh like a sort of sexual first aid.

if you both only managed to live long enough your worst enemy could become one of your best friends.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elkin's final, posthumous novel, maybe a little thin on plot (even by Elkin standards), although it doesn't seem like that from the outset. But it is unmistakably Elkin: the long streams of language, playing with sounds and synonyms, "jazz riffs" as William Gass put it. Mrs Ted Bliss is an elderly Jewish widow (a "baleboosteh manqué") living in Florida, who strikes up a sort of friendship with a Latin American kingpin over a parking space. He matches wits with the DEA; she has an iron rule against lying on the bed after it's been made. Their lives part ways and return, while she reflects on past memories (early life in Russia and Chicago, a son who died of cancer, a health-nut daughter-in-law who takes coffee enemas), as a deadly storm approaches the Gulf Coast. Elkin leans into the ethnic stereotypes: the Latins are passionate, effusive, and worldly; the Jews, are, well, stereotypical American Jews. ("Your condominium. When I remember, I say 'condominium.' It’s one of the biggest investments we make. Why use slang?") Elkin is one of the English language's great explorers, and I believe that his portrayals of the weird, the dying, and the unloved will outlive most of the canonical Jewish writers who outshone him in his day.

[steve smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not actually read this book, but rather had it read aloud to me by someone who enjoyed it very much herself. I sometimes got lost in whether I was enjoying it for it's own sake or was simply resonating empathetically with my dear narrator. If I didn't caveat it this way I might give it a 4.5. I'm stingy (unto fascist) with 5 star ratings.

Elkin's style has some of the best of my other favorite oddball artists... Dobyns, Letham, Palahnuik, Dodge(Jim), Robbins, Irving, Gruen, Tyler, etc.

[Sheila · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't finish this book. The run -on sentences pack so many adjectivesin there as if the author is trying to show how many words he knows. For example, describing someone's deafness including ALL the parts of the ear is just excessive. Also, it's very hard to follow who the writer is talking about at any given time, forcing you to go back & figure it out. I'm actually surprised this book was published. Very disappointed.

[Linda Wallace · Rating 1 out of 5]

As someone else said you either "got it" or " not" . I didn't get it. I have no,idea what this book was trying to get across. I should have given up after 30 pages, but kept expecting something to make it worth finishing - never happened. I didn't feel there was any cohesiveness to the story or any resolution at the end.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars. The sentences were remarkably long and convoluted sometimes, maybe on purpose to invite the reader into Mrs.Ted Bliss' frame of mind. Many of the words, Yiddish an Russian I suspect, were unknown to me. Nevertheless! Mrs.Ted Bliss is a wonderful character, loveable in spite of herself. And the adventures she gets in to, both in her mind and IRL, are hysterical!

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I toiled through this book like it was an obligation. Clueless Mrs. Ted Bliss meanders through her life in a fog. The perfect Jewish wife of the 1950’s try’s to weather all the changes in her life. I was longing to be put out of my misery.

[Libba Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know what to say about this one. I kind of hated it and the beginning really dragged for me. But then I got the feel for it and grew to to kind of like it. It was ridiculous but also…insightful. So 3 stars, I guess.

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Complicated feelings about this book. It's not fun, pretty nearly plotless, and I can't decide if it's a brave attempt to make an under-educated senior citizen immigrant a star, or just a cruel mockery of her.

[Cheryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful book…. This widow, who has no interests in life except conforming to her idea of what men want & need, goes on tirelessly with ramblings of life in her condo, neighbors she has nothing in common with and is absolutely tiring. This book wore me out just reading it!

[Yvonne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well done, good story. Just not one I could get into.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could not get into this book. Very slow, stream of consciousness style very irritating, and a boring story. Kept falling asleep when reading! Quit when 1/3 way through.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I forced myself to complete. I could not get into Mrs. Ted Bliss and aging in Florida. I found it boring too.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got about 1/3 and had to stop. Nothing much in the way of plot. There were some interesting insights but life is short (as the book says) and it didn’t seem worth it to muscle through to the end.

[Joseph Denicola · Rating 1 out of 5]

An annoying waste of time...stunned that this was an award winner.

[L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant!

[Ivy Wigmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Tex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abandoned. Wish I could have stuck it out as the demographic was intriguing—Jewish housewife/widow who gets mixed up with the mob unaware to her. More tedious than exciting.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the longest sentences I've ever come across.