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Stories from the Sixties
Stories from the Sixties [Hardcover]
- GenresShort Stories
400 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1971
25 people want to read
About the author
Stanley Elkin
53 books129 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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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 14, 2014
Stanley Elkin collected the Billboard Top 15 Hits of short stories of the Sixties. If you haven’t read them, you should. They now have the feel of classic oldies, but they rocked at the time. For me, it’s a nostalgic cruise. Flannery O’Connor, William H. Gass, Leonard Michaels, Peter Taylor, Saul Bellow, Robert Coover, Tillie Olson, John Updike, John Barth – it’s an all-star lineup. I knew, or at least met, several of these writers through my association with Stanley Elkin. We weren’t equals, Stanley and I. He was the university professor, I was the student. But he hung out with the Billboard Top 40 writers of the Sixties because he was one of them, so I tagged along.
It all seems boring and kind of stuffy now. As a college student in the late Sixties, practically nothing of my experience is reflected in these stories. Drugs, Vietnam, protest – not present. This is the establishment; these are the grownups. As was Stanley Elkin. There’s no Richard Brautigan, no Kurt Vonnegut. Those guys, regardless of age, were the youth, the Sixties in my mind. Put it this way: Stanley admired Frank Sinatra; I admired Frank Zappa. Stanley had a PhD and tenure; I had a draft card and a taste for weed.
Elkin’s preface to this book is like a syllabus of the Creative Writing class I took from him. It’s worth reading. His big idea was that a short story must be based on a good “situation.” He gives several examples of what a situation is — not plot, but sort of a combination of character and circumstance. Winning fifty dollars and not knowing how to spend it. That’s a situation. As I review it, I can see him standing in that stifling seminar room saying these same words:
I probably sound bitter, but I’m not. In those years at Washington University Saint Louis, 1965 through 1969, I learned how to write. I was challenged, and challenge is good. I rubbed elbows with famous writers and perhaps absorbed some of their magic. Here, collected, are some of those writers, some of that magic.
It all seems boring and kind of stuffy now. As a college student in the late Sixties, practically nothing of my experience is reflected in these stories. Drugs, Vietnam, protest – not present. This is the establishment; these are the grownups. As was Stanley Elkin. There’s no Richard Brautigan, no Kurt Vonnegut. Those guys, regardless of age, were the youth, the Sixties in my mind. Put it this way: Stanley admired Frank Sinatra; I admired Frank Zappa. Stanley had a PhD and tenure; I had a draft card and a taste for weed.
Elkin’s preface to this book is like a syllabus of the Creative Writing class I took from him. It’s worth reading. His big idea was that a short story must be based on a good “situation.” He gives several examples of what a situation is — not plot, but sort of a combination of character and circumstance. Winning fifty dollars and not knowing how to spend it. That’s a situation. As I review it, I can see him standing in that stifling seminar room saying these same words:
Situation – what the Muse says – precedes style, precedes plot, precedes everything. (Though style, plot and everything are implicit in situation.) … What the Muse gives us then is situation, possibility’s hothouse, fate’s, fiction’s genetic structure. (It’s an odd circumstance of aesthetics, however, that while short stories must have situations, novels frequently dispense with them. Perhaps this is because novels are about character and character is ubiquitous in human beings, while stories are about character in crisis – acute character.)Maybe that’s helpful. Maybe it’s blather. Elkin was a tough teacher — he’d mock you, he’d belittle your writing. He was also something of a comic genius, and he was a wonder to behold.
I probably sound bitter, but I’m not. In those years at Washington University Saint Louis, 1965 through 1969, I learned how to write. I was challenged, and challenge is good. I rubbed elbows with famous writers and perhaps absorbed some of their magic. Here, collected, are some of those writers, some of that magic.
February 5, 2018
Skipped the last story because it was a variation on some Greek mythology story and because I don't know anything about that I couldn't follow the story after two sentences. In the sixties a lot of people were named Jack and Harry apparently.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews