Searches and Seizures

by Stanley Elkin

In Searches & Seizures, Elkin tells the story of the criminal, the lovelorn, and the grieving, each searching desperately for fulfillment, while on the verge of receiving much more than they bargained for. Infused with Elkin's signature wit and richly drawn characters, The Bailbondsman, The Making of Ashenden, and The Condominium, are the creations of a literary virtuoso at the pinnacle of his craft.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, American, Literature, Contemporary, Audiobook, Novella

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

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

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searches and Seizures comprises three flowery postmodernistic novellas.
The Bailbondsman is a story of a man who makes his living bailing criminals out of jails…

It’s a big facility, eleven stories high with rough gray stone and bars so black and thick you can make them out even on the top story, law and order’s parallel lines. I love the jail. It’s a building which constantly hums, murmurs, the cons at the windows of the lower floors ragging the pedestrians or shouting obscenities across the areaway to the women’s block.

Any way to obtain more money seems to be suitable…
The Making of Ashenden is a fable of a young rich and weak fellow wishing life would offer him a test that he could prove he is a man…

I’ve been spared a lot, one of the blessed of the earth, at least one of its lucky, that privileged handful of the dramatically prospering, the sort whose secrets are asked, like the hundred-year-old man. There is no secret, of course; most of what happens to us is simple accident. Highish birth and a smooth network of appropriate connection like a tea service written into the will. But surely something in the blood too, locked into good fortune’s dominant genes like a blast ripening in a time bomb. Set to go off, my good looks and intelligence, yet exceptional still, take away my mouthful of silver spoon and lapful of luxury.

And life magnanimously sends him an ordeal and although it isn’t quite what he’d hoped for it makes a changed man out of him.
Ever since the stone age when people dwelled in caves the problem of abode remains one of the main concerns of man so there is a tale of The Condominium…

At first one thought it was a metal alloy, or perhaps a new element. Maybe it was used to fashion industrial diamonds. There were those who thought it had to do with big business, international stuff – combines, cartels. Others thought it was a sort of prophylactic. It was strange that the very people who would later become most intimate with the term should at first have had so vague a notion of what it meant. Only after doctors tell him does the patient know the name of his disease. Condominium.

Many questions of communal living didn’t change much since the time mankind resided in caves though.
Man is a platitudinous being and all the progress won’t make one any wiser.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not-bad Elkin. I have a feeling I'll be able to place it better once I've read more of his work.

I love what I saw in each of these novellas, however, which seemed to be a wilful abandon of the story's starting-off point. Each appeared to be about unhappy middle-aged dudes giving way to despair--which you may or may not know is one of my favourite topics (for whatever reason)--but they just dissolved into something else.

"Rich guy doesn't know how to love, dot dot dot, fucks a bear. The end."
"Can't say it adds up, or that I didn't love it!"

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley, you ripe madman son-of-a-bitch. The force of Elkin, a supernova and befallen God of both bewildered and broken prose brings in three short novels, like three profane eulogies of tarnished soul, all of them up to the gold standard of Stan's wordplay and world-building. Elkin hammers it home with a schlub, 'The Bailsbondsman', in the first tale - which plays Cincinnati like a broken chessboard as our protagonist falls prey to doubt at the very occupation that keeps him afloat. While straying in esoteric sub-plots in old Egypt, Elkin still shows he writes the unwinding of soul & stature like no other scribe. He truly is the Beckett of the mid-west, as dizzying as he is hilarious. In the 2nd novel, 'The Making of Ashenden', we read this novella like one long joke about nose-up observations of the rich and their own inherit cheapness when looking at all that life has to offer. The buildup is not as memorable as the finish here - Yes, Elkin turns pornographic and describes fornication with a Russian bear with bombastic aplomb- such a scene couldn't be understated, could it? Elkin can get quite filthy. But the paramount piece of the collection is 'The Condominium'. Playing with the same themes of J.G. Ballard's excellent 'High Rise', here the devolution of society is within 3 Chicago towers of a new condominium. Here the absurdities are loud but never ridiculous, and our poor sap, the Elkin bum of bums, is played by Marshall Preminger, a down & out lecturer who inherits his father's condo, a recipe for cordial disorders and ill intent. Everybody is these tales kibitzes with the best of them. Language is everything with Stanley, and god bless him and his writings. Surely a favorite of mine. Essential reading with these 'Searches and Seizures' but his best work can be found elsewhere. I bow down to you, Stanley. I kibitz, and kibitz.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first impulse is to begin with "Best bestiality scene in American literature", but I think that suggests a deeper familiarity than I'm comfortable with. What am I comfortable with? Elkin plays particularly in these stories with the idea of experience: what do you do with a hyper-articulate person who begins his "confession" obviously knowing what the outcome will be? Probably you've met people like this. But in Elkin's world, the static surface of despair (which doesn't know it's despair) will not remain unbroken: on the contrary, it will find itself rejected by its true love and wandering through the woods, until finally it finds/is found by a young, luscious, and extremely horny bear. Ashendan, wanders like Goldilocks, admires painterly landscape....hears bowmp-chicka-wa-WAAH music. Let the fun begin.

[Godine Publisher & Black Sparrow Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

"For Elkin, the sentence is more than instrumental to the end, and its loving elaboration of perceptions, surprising and just, is the key to his work, putting him among not only the best of novelists, but only the best of writers."
— Howard Nemerov

"The searches of Elkin's latest book are philosophical, but the seizures are almost epileptic. In three novellas, through three very different alienated characters, Elkin traces a search for an Other, whether it be a criminal prey, a beloved, or the dead. In each case the search is ended through a seizure, a paroxysm of hate, lust or despair. Elkin's strength as a writer lies in his arch, tricky, pyrotechnical style, and his ability to fuse horror and humor in each 'seizure'. He has given us three good novellas in this book, worthy of inclusion in any college or university fiction collection."
— Choice

"Wrenchingly funny and oddly moving. This collection of three new novellas should provide the uninitiated with an ideal introduction to Elkin's art even as it confirms addicts like me in our belief that no American novelist tells us more about where we are and what we are doing to ourselves. This is a remarkably various talent, and the stories in Search & Seizures nicely illustrate its range."
— Thomas R. Edwards, New York Times Book Review

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read some blurb on the back of my copy that said Elkin was one of America's "great comic writers." OH. Is that what this is?? Comic? Whew. It's obscenely exhausting, but he does have great flow. I certainly enjoyed some passages (and novellas) more than others.

I was going to leave my copy in my London apartment, which is shared by other colleagues, but the fact that my name is in the cover and that the book has such wide-ranging vulgarity makes me reconsider that option...

(Started in June 2014; couldn't finish. Should probably try again.)

[Nora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writes about fucked up shit without asserting that the world is a hopelessly fucked up place. Sentences are elaborate without becoming glamorous. Characters are absurd without becoming absurdist. Overall I'm pretty down if not in love. Thanks Pappy for passing this one along.

[Duke Cullinan]

First I've read of Elkin. Brilliant writer. It takes awhile to get used to the idea that he's going to free-form a fireworks display of words, metaphors, images, in favor of moving the story along. There is story here in these three novellas, interesting enough plots, but the real show is the language, Elkin's exuberance and delight in pouring lush description over fanciful conceit atop meticulous observation.

[Dawn Wells · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you get past the vulgarity, the writing is okay.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiercely original.

[G · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. For such a highly rated collection, I found it uniquely disappointing. Elkins has a great vocabulary, but as a storyteller these three works were almost unintelligible.

[Avery Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Bailbondsman was fantastic, seedy characters, and the story had great momentum. I liked the knotty unfolding of the robbery and the tension between Main and Crainpool.

“I like him to look cold. It gives him the look of a clerk in Dickens and lends tone to the place. I even made him a high stool he can sit on when a client comes into the shop.”

Excellent.

However, I was disappointed with The Making of Ashenden. I think the vulgarity and provocation of Brewster and the Bear was lazy. Whether or not this could be interpreted as some sort of transformation, an overcorrection that occurred on the journey back to innocence — I don’t really care to find out. I think the potential for the story was suffocated. Smothered in ‘honey’ and left unpalatable.