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The Dick Gibson Show
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.
356 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Stanley Elkin
53 books126 followersStanley 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."
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."
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December 4, 2020
American Obsession
In 1970 Jerzy Kosinski published his novel Being There, a sarcastic critique of the media culture of the West. Its protagonist is Chauncey Gardiner, described as “a man without qualities”. As a servant in a mansion in which he has spent his entire life, Chauncey has learned about social interactions primarily through television. Although no one is quite sure what he means, his responses appear sage and meaningful. He becomes a respected advisor to governments and business.
The point of Kosinski's piece is the danger posed by the media in creating not just individuals like Chauncey but whole societies that consider him to be normal and even intelligent. In a time of Donald Trump the message of Being There is clearly relevant. [It is also interesting to note that as this review is being written, Glen Newey of the London Review of Books has just described the recently resigned MP David Cameron as “a man with no qualities”.] Being There was made into a film starring Peter Sellers in 1979, thus assuring its place in cultural memory.
In the same year that Being There appeared, Stanley Elkin produced his novel The Dick Gibson Show. Also about the media and its effects, Elkin has a very different and, in light of its Trumpian relevance, a rather more prescient point to raise. Elkin doesn’t use sarcasm; he is far too empathetic an author to trash his characters. And his medium of interest is not television but that somewhat archaic technology of AM (medium wave) radio, a technology which was giving way when he wrote to FM and ultimately to the internet. What Elkin writes about, moreover, is not the effect of mass media on society but the effects of society on those involved in mass media – the corruption flows from the latter to the former. This makes for a rather more interesting tale of moral development.
Elkin is prescient in several ways. He anticipates first of all the transformation of AM radio into so-called talk-radio, one of the most important political forces in the US today – mostly right wing and often, like The Trump-boosting Brietbart, important electoral vehicles. In addition, the form of the Dick Gibson show that evolves during the book is a sort of emulation of the internet before anyone is likely to have even considered it as a possibility.
The Show is a telephone interaction between individual listeners and the eponymous Dick Gibson from midnight to dawn. There appear the now familiar proto-internet types - trolls and cranks, frauds, purveyors of pornography, and exhibitionists - calling into the show. But the main content of the calls Dick receives are expressions of misery, unhappiness, confusion, pain and a general inability to deal with life. In short, what anyone with an internet news feed receives daily. This, Dick considers, is a general malaise of obsessiveness that exists in American society and is revealed, not created, by the media. A rather different point than Kosinski’s
Much like Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, the sheer weight of misery and obsession in human lives – his own as well as other people’s - drives Dick to contemplate murder. The fact that he doesn’t carry out the thought but finally takes responsibility for his own life provides a conclusion more satisfying than Kosinski’s if markedly less well known.
Could it be that Trump is really a victim rather than a manipulator of the media? It would explain much if he were. Like his apparent inability to discern reality yet still maintain some sort of 'connection' with those who think reality can be found on Fox and Brietbart.
In 1970 Jerzy Kosinski published his novel Being There, a sarcastic critique of the media culture of the West. Its protagonist is Chauncey Gardiner, described as “a man without qualities”. As a servant in a mansion in which he has spent his entire life, Chauncey has learned about social interactions primarily through television. Although no one is quite sure what he means, his responses appear sage and meaningful. He becomes a respected advisor to governments and business.
The point of Kosinski's piece is the danger posed by the media in creating not just individuals like Chauncey but whole societies that consider him to be normal and even intelligent. In a time of Donald Trump the message of Being There is clearly relevant. [It is also interesting to note that as this review is being written, Glen Newey of the London Review of Books has just described the recently resigned MP David Cameron as “a man with no qualities”.] Being There was made into a film starring Peter Sellers in 1979, thus assuring its place in cultural memory.
In the same year that Being There appeared, Stanley Elkin produced his novel The Dick Gibson Show. Also about the media and its effects, Elkin has a very different and, in light of its Trumpian relevance, a rather more prescient point to raise. Elkin doesn’t use sarcasm; he is far too empathetic an author to trash his characters. And his medium of interest is not television but that somewhat archaic technology of AM (medium wave) radio, a technology which was giving way when he wrote to FM and ultimately to the internet. What Elkin writes about, moreover, is not the effect of mass media on society but the effects of society on those involved in mass media – the corruption flows from the latter to the former. This makes for a rather more interesting tale of moral development.
Elkin is prescient in several ways. He anticipates first of all the transformation of AM radio into so-called talk-radio, one of the most important political forces in the US today – mostly right wing and often, like The Trump-boosting Brietbart, important electoral vehicles. In addition, the form of the Dick Gibson show that evolves during the book is a sort of emulation of the internet before anyone is likely to have even considered it as a possibility.
The Show is a telephone interaction between individual listeners and the eponymous Dick Gibson from midnight to dawn. There appear the now familiar proto-internet types - trolls and cranks, frauds, purveyors of pornography, and exhibitionists - calling into the show. But the main content of the calls Dick receives are expressions of misery, unhappiness, confusion, pain and a general inability to deal with life. In short, what anyone with an internet news feed receives daily. This, Dick considers, is a general malaise of obsessiveness that exists in American society and is revealed, not created, by the media. A rather different point than Kosinski’s
Much like Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, the sheer weight of misery and obsession in human lives – his own as well as other people’s - drives Dick to contemplate murder. The fact that he doesn’t carry out the thought but finally takes responsibility for his own life provides a conclusion more satisfying than Kosinski’s if markedly less well known.
Could it be that Trump is really a victim rather than a manipulator of the media? It would explain much if he were. Like his apparent inability to discern reality yet still maintain some sort of 'connection' with those who think reality can be found on Fox and Brietbart.
August 4, 2014
Why are you not reading Elkin? You really should be you know.
May 15, 2022
Oh boy.
(Please don’t judge me that I liked this.)
This book is the friend who’s insanely funny but makes you perpetually on edge as you anticipate the inevitable moment he’s* going to go over the line. Way over. Like “Dude, wtf?” over.
The story, if approached differently could have actually been tender and bittersweet. But this isn’t the approach Elkin took. The story instead primarily functions as a clothesline to hang vignettes told by a cast of freaks telling mean little stories. The little freaks are outrageous id-throwing firebombers. Should I laugh? I have no idea!
On one hand, it's very readable—you can’t deny he’s a fantastic writer. And there’s a case to be made, though it would have to be by someone smarter than I am, that the book presciently anticipates the relentlessly damaging fucked up social media tribalism world we now live in. But perhaps not. Maybe this is just an uncomfortable relic of its 1970 zeitgeist.
It kinda reminds me of Negrophobia: An Urban Parable, but that book had a purpose to its outrage. I’m not sure what the purpose was here. But, hell, it was funny.
*It’s hard to imagine a woman zinging some of this misogyny and locker-roomisms around so carelessly and expertly; the racism, sure.
(Please don’t judge me that I liked this.)
This book is the friend who’s insanely funny but makes you perpetually on edge as you anticipate the inevitable moment he’s* going to go over the line. Way over. Like “Dude, wtf?” over.
The story, if approached differently could have actually been tender and bittersweet. But this isn’t the approach Elkin took. The story instead primarily functions as a clothesline to hang vignettes told by a cast of freaks telling mean little stories. The little freaks are outrageous id-throwing firebombers. Should I laugh? I have no idea!
On one hand, it's very readable—you can’t deny he’s a fantastic writer. And there’s a case to be made, though it would have to be by someone smarter than I am, that the book presciently anticipates the relentlessly damaging fucked up social media tribalism world we now live in. But perhaps not. Maybe this is just an uncomfortable relic of its 1970 zeitgeist.
It kinda reminds me of Negrophobia: An Urban Parable, but that book had a purpose to its outrage. I’m not sure what the purpose was here. But, hell, it was funny.
*It’s hard to imagine a woman zinging some of this misogyny and locker-roomisms around so carelessly and expertly; the racism, sure.
July 3, 2010
I wrote a review but it got deleted :(
March 26, 2013
Stanley Elkin is perhaps the most dishonorably forgotten writer of the last 40 years. And The Dick Gibson Show is his masterpiece. Anyone who cares about the romantic midnight vagueries of late night radio; writing that plunges from the fabulist to the borscht belt funny to the cosmically maddening will all enjoy this tome.
November 13, 2015
I happened to read a brief reference to this novel in a New Yorker article a couple of weeks ago so I picked it up. I confess I don't get the excellence of this book, which was nominated for the National Book Award back in 1972.
Dick Gibson is the radio name of a radio personality whose life we follow from the 1930's into the late 60s or early 70s. Although we know a few of his other radio names we never learn his birth name. He starts out working on small radio stations in the mid west serving his self-termed apprenticeship. After serving a stint in the army during WWII he becomes a bigger name hosting a couple of late night talk shows; first a nightly panel and finally an all night call in show called Night Letters.
Dick Gibson is a funnel for story telling and personal histories. Through his listening to others' stories we get a broad slice of Americana in the early and mid twentieth century. We read about a nurse he hooks up with on a bus and lives with at a nursing facility for a few months. He has a fantastical stint on an island during the war where the Dodo bird is featured. He develops (he thinks) an enemy in one of his panelists - Behr-Bleibtreau who may or may not follow him on the radio for years. We learn of Arnold, a memory expert whose career falters when he becomes far-sighted and can only memorize mountains and curves on the Grand Canyon.
Through it all he discovers that "Radio has badly prepared him for his new life. He had never suspected the enormous chasm between the world of radio with the sane, middle-class ways of its supposed audience and the genuine article." (p 92)
I kept threatening to put it down and start something else but I found it just interesting enough to keep plugging through. There are enough clever events and people to keep it in my hands. He describes going to a town picnic with other members of the nursing facility: "I entered all the contests and potato-raced my heart out, finishing in the money. No mean feat, for a lot of these fellows had been born with only one leg and until you've potato-raced against a congenital one-legged man in a sack you haven't potato-raced." (P 69)
One of his callers has been abducted by aliens:
Herman Becendiest: "The Martians chose me. They come down to my field while I was plowin' and taken me aboard. Then, whoosh, up we went to Saturn. I'd say it taken 'bout half an hour. We didn't land. I ain't claimin' we ever landed. Not on Saturn proper we didn't. But we set down on one of the rings. The blue one. Yes sir.
.
.
.
Dick Gibson: Then how do you know they were from Mars?
Herman Becendienst: Well, I seen their license plates." (P 142)
This is fantastical satire; not realism. As I write the review I see it more clearly and with a more open mind then when I read it. It certainly received rave reviews when it was published. My reservations may very well stem from my expectations and frame of mind when reading (cooped up with a broken leg). As I read it I was rating from 1 to 3 stars; so take my 2 stars with a grain of salt and see if you might like it.
Dick Gibson is the radio name of a radio personality whose life we follow from the 1930's into the late 60s or early 70s. Although we know a few of his other radio names we never learn his birth name. He starts out working on small radio stations in the mid west serving his self-termed apprenticeship. After serving a stint in the army during WWII he becomes a bigger name hosting a couple of late night talk shows; first a nightly panel and finally an all night call in show called Night Letters.
Dick Gibson is a funnel for story telling and personal histories. Through his listening to others' stories we get a broad slice of Americana in the early and mid twentieth century. We read about a nurse he hooks up with on a bus and lives with at a nursing facility for a few months. He has a fantastical stint on an island during the war where the Dodo bird is featured. He develops (he thinks) an enemy in one of his panelists - Behr-Bleibtreau who may or may not follow him on the radio for years. We learn of Arnold, a memory expert whose career falters when he becomes far-sighted and can only memorize mountains and curves on the Grand Canyon.
Through it all he discovers that "Radio has badly prepared him for his new life. He had never suspected the enormous chasm between the world of radio with the sane, middle-class ways of its supposed audience and the genuine article." (p 92)
I kept threatening to put it down and start something else but I found it just interesting enough to keep plugging through. There are enough clever events and people to keep it in my hands. He describes going to a town picnic with other members of the nursing facility: "I entered all the contests and potato-raced my heart out, finishing in the money. No mean feat, for a lot of these fellows had been born with only one leg and until you've potato-raced against a congenital one-legged man in a sack you haven't potato-raced." (P 69)
One of his callers has been abducted by aliens:
Herman Becendiest: "The Martians chose me. They come down to my field while I was plowin' and taken me aboard. Then, whoosh, up we went to Saturn. I'd say it taken 'bout half an hour. We didn't land. I ain't claimin' we ever landed. Not on Saturn proper we didn't. But we set down on one of the rings. The blue one. Yes sir.
.
.
.
Dick Gibson: Then how do you know they were from Mars?
Herman Becendienst: Well, I seen their license plates." (P 142)
This is fantastical satire; not realism. As I write the review I see it more clearly and with a more open mind then when I read it. It certainly received rave reviews when it was published. My reservations may very well stem from my expectations and frame of mind when reading (cooped up with a broken leg). As I read it I was rating from 1 to 3 stars; so take my 2 stars with a grain of salt and see if you might like it.
November 17, 2017
What can I say? At multiple points I simply stopped reading and stared at the pages of THE DICK GIBSON SHOW, wide-eyed and jaw agape, a mirthful awe rippling over me. Stanley Elkin, man. He was in possession of a howitzer of a mind. He is known for his sense of humour (often, even, understandably, though it is a misdirection, as a humourist), but I feel like he has been given short shrift at times in regards to his formidable literary gifts. This is serious (hilarious) literary fiction. And humbling. Because the book is a surprising, robust, and convention-flouting achievement in the realm of form / structure, and because so much of it is composed of long, digressive, popping-off-the-page dialogues, this may be the first great American novel by another author that invokes for me that master's master, that American literary eminence par excellence, William Gaddis. Nobody who is purported to invoke Gaddis ever invokes Gaddis for me, but there you have it, folks. Please also note the gushing blurb on the inside of the front cover of the Dalkey from intellectual / literary behemoth Joseph McElroy, a man not known for going around promiscuously dispensing compliments to his contemporaries. I truly marvel at this book. It engages the America the preceded, endured, and tried in chaos and ignominy to re-engineer itself in the wake of the second world war in a way that is supernal in its individuality and breadth. And it continually brings the house down. (Brought this house down at any rate.) Dick Gibson is a self-constructed Candide of the airways. Almost a non-person, certainly a becoming-person, a kind of inchoate fledgling, identifying himself fitfully in the mirror of his nation. Invisibly, problematically indivisibly. The name Dick Gibson itself is but merely one of a number of self-appointed sobriquets our hero gives himself; we never learn his real name. This is a book about time and the voices that we encounter - voices which occasionally console or cajole us, periodically bombard or assault. It is irreverent in the extreme, and it milks laughter from some truly unsavory business. It has its havoc and eats it too. Good taste is never an impediment, just as it never has been for fellow hilarious mischief-maker Robert Coover. Easily one of the best things I have ever read. And you could not possibly be expected to conceive of a better ending. I almost want to throw my hands in the air. I always thought myself gifted in the arena of dark humour. I have often mused upon the litheness and dexterity of my own mind. I am an amateur, friend. Elkin is King Shit and THE DICK GIBSON SHOW is off the frickin' charts.
August 8, 2022
This is a weird book.... I think it's meant to be something of a social history, how America was impacted by the widespread development of radio and what that does to identity, community, et al, through the story of the titular Dick Gibson, who lives his life through radio. I'm not sure it totally succeeds at that-- even if the book's most successful final section, a collage of voices heard over the radio, the book never escapes Gibson/ Elkin's verbal tics. But it's interesting nonetheless, a collection of embedded stories, some of which are really captivating.
There are elements here, in terms of racial and sexual stereotyping and language, that are hard to take. Like, just gross stuff. I don't think it can be put down to the attitudes of the time, or capturing the way people speak or spoke. But maybe no one other than me cares about this stuff.
An ambitious attempt to make sense of a culture in transition. It didn't quite work-- it feels like it would have been belated even when it was published in the early 70s. But a lot to chew on.
There are elements here, in terms of racial and sexual stereotyping and language, that are hard to take. Like, just gross stuff. I don't think it can be put down to the attitudes of the time, or capturing the way people speak or spoke. But maybe no one other than me cares about this stuff.
An ambitious attempt to make sense of a culture in transition. It didn't quite work-- it feels like it would have been belated even when it was published in the early 70s. But a lot to chew on.
October 20, 2011
This book is separated into three parts. The first part made me weep with envy; there is more imagination packed in word for word than in any other work I've ever read. The second part managed to maintain that same sense of adventure while narrowing it's scope. It kept me going. I said to my wife when I was halfway through this second part that if Elkin managed to keep his pace, this would be my favorite book of all time (for now). I didn't think he could do it, though, I said.
Unfortunately, I was right. The third part falters. Rather than ratcheting up the drama and propelling the narrative to an end, it seems to suffer from that collage impulse that so many post-modernist-affected writers suffer from. The book seems to want to make a point rather than let us just see the world through Gibson's eyes, which was all the propulsion the novel needed until here. True, there are some magnificent ideas lodged in some truly fascinating characters in the thrid part; the problem is they never evolve beyond just that: ideas. And, as a consequence, Gibson himself becomes less clear, less defined than he was earlier on in the narrative.
Maybe that is Elkin's point. Maybe the point is the haziness that descends when you define yourself as a conduit for the experiences of others. It's a fine point. But when the author forsakes the story almost entirely for the point, then I'm not convinced.
Which is all a little harsh, maybe. I really did enjoy reading this and I am blown away by Elkin's style, his imagination, his ambition. This would have been a five star book if I hadn't spent my time with the final section of it wishing it would end differently.
Unfortunately, I was right. The third part falters. Rather than ratcheting up the drama and propelling the narrative to an end, it seems to suffer from that collage impulse that so many post-modernist-affected writers suffer from. The book seems to want to make a point rather than let us just see the world through Gibson's eyes, which was all the propulsion the novel needed until here. True, there are some magnificent ideas lodged in some truly fascinating characters in the thrid part; the problem is they never evolve beyond just that: ideas. And, as a consequence, Gibson himself becomes less clear, less defined than he was earlier on in the narrative.
Maybe that is Elkin's point. Maybe the point is the haziness that descends when you define yourself as a conduit for the experiences of others. It's a fine point. But when the author forsakes the story almost entirely for the point, then I'm not convinced.
Which is all a little harsh, maybe. I really did enjoy reading this and I am blown away by Elkin's style, his imagination, his ambition. This would have been a five star book if I hadn't spent my time with the final section of it wishing it would end differently.
November 18, 2015
This book took me a couple of months to read. The first section was how the disk jockey, Dick Gibson, got his education in radio. The second part is about his show. He finally designed a show that was a talk show. This was new since the novel takes place from the 30s to the 60s. Parts are not understandable and parts seem to spell out the real kernel of the book. The character Behr-Bleibtreau, whom Dick Gibson, the protagonist seems to be afraid of, but I don't know why. Parts of the novel don't seem necessary. The third part is about the people who called in to his show and the stories they told. Perhaps the following is the theme of the book: "There was too much suffering. Too much went wrong; victims were everywhere. That was your real population explosion. There was mindless obsession, concentration without point, offs and ups, long life's niggling fractions, its Dow-Jones concern with itself. What had his own life been, his interminable apprenticeship which he saw now he could never end? And everyone blameless as himself, everyone doing his best but maddened at last, all, all zealous, all with explanations ready at hand and serving an ideal of truth or beauty or health or grace. Everyone--everyone...all one could hope was to find his scapegoat, to wait for him..." Perhaps the author Stanley Elkin is writing that life is meaningless and no matter what we do or how we do it, it doesn't matter. I think this is a book that has to be read more carefully than I read it and with fewer breaks between readings. I do it recommend it, but for someone who will read more closely than I did.
November 27, 2015
a novel published in 1970 that didn't even begin to imagine where talk radio would go. But still, as an understanding of what radio had done to the nation in the first 5 decades of its existence (and relating to the idea that everybody was the star of their own story, which they were happy to share with the world), this is pretty good stuff. And it's freaking hilarious. Elkin invented comic situations that lesser writers would have turned into whole novels, and then tosses them out there over the space of a few pages. And the last line of the book cracked me the hell up.
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June 10, 2018The most interesting thing about this novel for me is that we never learn Dick Gibson's real name, as he states that "Dick Gibson" is among many other on-air pseudonyms he adopts and renders the novel as centered around a nameless character. This sort of ephemeral identity is reflected in the picaresque plot.
July 13, 2014
This was an increasingly surreal story about a talk radio host's life from the 30s until the 70s.(isn). I was never 100% sure if the various calls he received were real, or all in his mind (or both). It was dark, funny, and mostly unsettling, but overall, very hard to put down.
February 13, 2016
Reads like David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" - and I am sure he read and assimilated Elkin's style.
This is one of the few books I've ever read that is genuinely hilarious and witheringly satirical.
This is one of the few books I've ever read that is genuinely hilarious and witheringly satirical.
February 27, 2018
I found the book funny, clever and highly original. But.....I also found the author's rambling, tangential style very difficult to read. At one point I counted six M-dash tangents packed into a single compound sentence that spanned 3/4 of a page. For me the cleverness was not worth the work.
February 5, 2021
I'm just not feeling it for this one. Some of the jokes maybe a bit outdated, as well as the writing style, find it hard to engage. Maybe elkin's just not fer me.
June 17, 2022
The star rating is not really an adequate way to measure my response to this experimental novel about late-night talk radio and the American character(s). I don't know how much appeal this book will have to Elkin novices or the Elkin-averse, but as an Elkin-head, I appreciated reading him at his most unmoored from the conventions of the traditionally plotted novel. (The fundamentalist adherence to the three-act structure in literature and film has done much damage to the human imagination.) The parts are greater than the whole, I think, and it occasionally plods, but I don't know if the great paragraphs would be as great without that freedom to plod. If the novel sometimes seems like an excuse for Elkin to say, "Hey, check out all these brilliant tricks I can do," and if the casual racism and sexism he employs to much sharper observational use in his other work comes across here as curdled, giggly ugliness, it also sometimes brings us paragraphs like this one:
"Despite change, much had remained the same—or else progressed sequentially that having known the beginning he might have anticipated what came afterward. Again he was struck by his old sense of the several Americas; he knew that lurking behind the uniformities of federal highway system and the green redundancy of enormous exit signs that made Sedalia seem as important as Chicago, and the blazing fifty-foot logotypes of the motels, and colonial A&P's and Howard Johnsons' like outposts of Eastern empire in west Texas's scrub country, and teller's cage Dairy Queens wantonly labeled as old steamer trunks, and enamelly service stations, and in back of all the franchised restaurants and department stores—there was a Macy's in Kansas City—dance studios, taco stands, drugstores, motion picture theaters and even nightclubs, and to the side of the double arches of the hamburger drive-ins and the huge spinning chicken buckets canted from the perpendicular like an axis through true north, America atmospherically existed. It wasn't the land; he had no mystic's or patriot's or even householder's sense of the land at all. Region somehow persisted inside monolith. The Midwest threw a shadow as exotic as Spain's. He believed in all of it. New Englanders were salty, Southerners proud, Westerners independent, Easterners sophisticated, Appalachians wise and taciturn and knew the old, authentic songs. And beneath all that, beneath all the clichés of region, he believed in further, ultimate disparities between rich and poor and lovely and ugly and quick and dull and strong and weak. And structuring even 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦, adumbrating difference like geologic layer, character, quirk, personality like a coat of arms, and below personality the unspoken, and below the unspoken the unspeakable, so that as he walked down Main Street he might just as well have been in Asia. It didn't matter that the columnists were syndicated or that the rate of exchange was one hundred cents on the dollar; he felt a vague, xenophobic unease. He stared at people as at landmarks or battlegrounds or historic sites; he moved up and down the aisles of Rexall's Drugstore as through someone else's church, and picked at the Colonel's fried chicken like some fastidious visitor to Easter Island pantomiming his way through a feast of guts."
"Despite change, much had remained the same—or else progressed sequentially that having known the beginning he might have anticipated what came afterward. Again he was struck by his old sense of the several Americas; he knew that lurking behind the uniformities of federal highway system and the green redundancy of enormous exit signs that made Sedalia seem as important as Chicago, and the blazing fifty-foot logotypes of the motels, and colonial A&P's and Howard Johnsons' like outposts of Eastern empire in west Texas's scrub country, and teller's cage Dairy Queens wantonly labeled as old steamer trunks, and enamelly service stations, and in back of all the franchised restaurants and department stores—there was a Macy's in Kansas City—dance studios, taco stands, drugstores, motion picture theaters and even nightclubs, and to the side of the double arches of the hamburger drive-ins and the huge spinning chicken buckets canted from the perpendicular like an axis through true north, America atmospherically existed. It wasn't the land; he had no mystic's or patriot's or even householder's sense of the land at all. Region somehow persisted inside monolith. The Midwest threw a shadow as exotic as Spain's. He believed in all of it. New Englanders were salty, Southerners proud, Westerners independent, Easterners sophisticated, Appalachians wise and taciturn and knew the old, authentic songs. And beneath all that, beneath all the clichés of region, he believed in further, ultimate disparities between rich and poor and lovely and ugly and quick and dull and strong and weak. And structuring even 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦, adumbrating difference like geologic layer, character, quirk, personality like a coat of arms, and below personality the unspoken, and below the unspoken the unspeakable, so that as he walked down Main Street he might just as well have been in Asia. It didn't matter that the columnists were syndicated or that the rate of exchange was one hundred cents on the dollar; he felt a vague, xenophobic unease. He stared at people as at landmarks or battlegrounds or historic sites; he moved up and down the aisles of Rexall's Drugstore as through someone else's church, and picked at the Colonel's fried chicken like some fastidious visitor to Easter Island pantomiming his way through a feast of guts."
November 4, 2019
One could read this novel—and perhaps the history of radio—as either the literary saga of America or as a bunch of pointless drivel meant to pass the time. The story of Dick Gibson is told in three acts, spanning from the Depression through WWII, the hopeful postwar years, and the era of Vietnam. The programs that Dick hosts change over that time, from record spinning to panel discussions to an increasingly nihilistic call-in show. Elkin tells us that these changes in radio taste come about because of modest improvements in technology (that, for example, the call-in show is a natural consequence of the telephone hook-up and the six-second tape delay), but of course as readers we believe they reflect something deeper—a shattering of the monolithic popular culture of Bob Hope and the like from which we have never recovered.
The story is larger than life and full of humor, but is not a work of comedy—more of social satire. It is written in a voice that springs equally from Garrison Keillor and from Jack Kerouac (the latter, in his Visions of Cody from ten years before, similarly used a verbatim transcription for his middle act). That is, it is a voice that paints a picture not of characters (none here are very believable) but of society. The characters are iron filings subject to greater magnetic forces.
The story is larger than life and full of humor, but is not a work of comedy—more of social satire. It is written in a voice that springs equally from Garrison Keillor and from Jack Kerouac (the latter, in his Visions of Cody from ten years before, similarly used a verbatim transcription for his middle act). That is, it is a voice that paints a picture not of characters (none here are very believable) but of society. The characters are iron filings subject to greater magnetic forces.
June 2, 2018
In one of his finest works Elkin dives headlong into the absurd and colorful world of talk radio. The setting provides the perfect platform for his style, as he expertly undresses the systems of 24/7 entertainment. Dick Gibson is the quick-witted observer and cataloguer of the weird, his reward a career defined by unrest and loneliness. Indeed, many of the characters, underneath their technicolor outsize personalities, show acute vulnerability and isolation. Talk radio serves as a medium for them to try and from real human connections, anticipating the ways in which people today use online forums or social media in the hopes of forming new communities. But, as is the case today, the platform often increases isolation, or, at its worst, deteriorates standard definitions of human decency and compassion, it's users reduced to mere hostiles.
September 12, 2018
The third star is for the fantastic writing, and that's not an adjective I get to use a lot. I'm a disc jockey/interview show host who started in the business four years after the book was published, and knew a lot of the "history of broadcasting" elements that Elkins includes. But the jacket blurb was misleading. It intimated that Gibson was the precursor to outrageous personalities (if you can call them that) like Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, but he mostly just sits and listens to the veeeeery loooong stories of people who call him up on his all-night talk show. This book felt to me like a glued-together series of character studies he'd created and then couldn't find a home for in other novels, and I didn't care about a single one. Even his imagined antagonist, a West Coast psychiatrist, doesn't really "do" anything in the end.
August 2, 2020
I'm not one who normally gives up on books once I'm past the first 10 pages, but I seriously considered abandoning this one several times. If you are intrigued by the description of this book, be prepared for it to sound choppy and unorganized at the beginning, but once you get to Part 2 it gets much better. Still, I'm not sure the final payoff was worth the effort. I found parts of the book interesting because of my background in radio, but I very few, if any, of the characters were sympathetic--but who says a book has to have sympathetic characters? If you are looking for a recommendation on whether to read this book, I would say there are much better books out there more deserving of your time.
March 9, 2018
Note: This was read in conjunction with Kosinski’s “Being There” as they are both concerned with how the media influence thought and culture. Unfortunately, this was NOT about that as much as it was about a main character who felt he was much more important, or SHOULD be much more important, than he was. If that wasn’t enough, the last third or fourth of the book was just a bunch ideas tossed in under the guise of callers calling in to his call-in show. It gave me the impression that he was just vomiting out his short story idea notebook. All in all, two stars is being very generous.
November 14, 2021
The beginning of Part II is one of the most amazing things I've ever read. It's written in the same misleadingly plain, wholesome American voice as Thomas Berger's "Sneaky People," and it plunges into insane depravity -- and then gets even *stranger*. All while using the same careful mid-20th-century prose. If you're not sure you want to read this book, then skip to Part II (you won't miss out on anything from Part I) and start there, and realize that you've embarked on a wild ride.
December 19, 2021
Abandoned 69/335
Love the trope of "nurse has sex with disabled bed bound individual and gets pregnant" but I'm not even sure if the one in this book gets pregnant because I do not want to read any more of it, I am just guessing.
Writing style wasn't doing it either. It wanted to emulate radio speech with its dialogue obviously, but there was nothing else there besides dialogue, and it wasn't that good really- best left to real radio.
Love the trope of "nurse has sex with disabled bed bound individual and gets pregnant" but I'm not even sure if the one in this book gets pregnant because I do not want to read any more of it, I am just guessing.
Writing style wasn't doing it either. It wanted to emulate radio speech with its dialogue obviously, but there was nothing else there besides dialogue, and it wasn't that good really- best left to real radio.
March 30, 2018
A dizzying, pyrotechnic showcase yet wholly accessible for attentive readers.
April 17, 2020
This is what I wanted that Robert Coover book to be like.
November 11, 2022
No redeeming features. Don't waste your time.
Want to read
April 10, 2024ملاحظة لي: لم اقرا الكتاب بعد
مقترح من ستيفين كينغ
مقترح من ستيفين كينغ
October 17, 2020
2.5. I've had this on my list for awhile, and then lo and behold the audio shows up as available from the library. At first I reacted to the ramblings of the narrator (voice of George Guidall, who I've heard quite often in Audioworld) like I would to Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show: I only had the vaguest of notions of what he was talking about but his delivery just cracked me up.
Then after almost 3 hours (20%) I just couldn't take any more. He started sounding like a lewd Garrison Keillor(and in my opinion just as un-funny).
I really don't think this holds up very well as a "classic." The humor is often corny and dated, and in some parts downright offensive in this day and age.
Not really recommended.
Then after almost 3 hours (20%) I just couldn't take any more. He started sounding like a lewd Garrison Keillor(and in my opinion just as un-funny).
I really don't think this holds up very well as a "classic." The humor is often corny and dated, and in some parts downright offensive in this day and age.
Not really recommended.
June 25, 2007
some really hilarios stuff in here. Elkin is an absolute master of the verbless sentence, just chock full of well-decribed nouns.
There are great snatches of language here, but the itinerancy of the protagonist is not as well-worked as the cruising of the protagonist in Elkin's "Franchiser."
The movement of the character/ plot is actually kind of irrelevant to what I found to mine in the book: the absurd pleasures of language
There are great snatches of language here, but the itinerancy of the protagonist is not as well-worked as the cruising of the protagonist in Elkin's "Franchiser."
The movement of the character/ plot is actually kind of irrelevant to what I found to mine in the book: the absurd pleasures of language
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