David C Dougherty - Shouting Down the Silence: A Biography of Stanley Elkin

Shouting Down the Silence

A Biography of Stanley Elkin

David C. Dougherty

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield

2010 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

c 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Frontispiece: painting by Joan Elkin, photograph by the author. Used by permission of Joan Elkin and Marilyn and Steve Teitelbaum.

Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Center for the Humanities, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dougherty, David C.

Shouting down the silence : a biography of Stanley Elkin / David C. Dougherty.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-252-03508-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Elkin, Stanley, 19301995.

2. Authors, American20th centuryBiography.

I. Title.

PS3555.l47z63 2010

813.54dc22 2009024341

[B]

Shouting Down the Silence

is for Stanleys muse, Joan, and mine, Barbara.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Correspondence from or to Stanley Elkin, unless otherwise noted, is from the two Elkin Collections at the Olin Library, Washington University, or from diskettes from Elkins personal computer that were supplied by Molly Elkin, Esq., and by the Olin Library. Special thanks to Chatham Ewing, then Olin Library Special Collections librarian, for transforming the documents from a Lexitron format to one that is accessible via standard word processing programs. Other archives cited include the Albert and Naomi Lebowitz and the William H. Gass archives in the Olin Library Special Collections, as well as the Anne and Georges Borchardt archives at Columbia University.

Citations to and quotations from Elkins novels, stories, and novellas, unless otherwise noted, refer to the Dalkey Archive series of Elkin texts. Because Elkin often used ellipses in his works and his letters to emphasize a point or guide the sentences rhythm, Ive used bracketed ellipses [ ] to indicate that Im omitting content from quotations.

Portions of some chapters have appeared, in substantially different form, in other publications. The author thanks the editors for permission to incorporate revised versions in this book.

Portions of chapter 6 appeared in the following publications: New England Review 27 (2006); Meeting Bad Men, the foreword to A Bad Man (Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive, 2003); and Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Short Story Writers since World War II, edited by Patrick Meanor and Gwen Davis (Detroit: Bruccoli-Clark, 1998).

Portions of chapter 7 appeared in Listening In on America, the introduction to A Casebook on Stanley Elkins The Dick Gibson Show, series editor Robert McLaughlin (Normal, Ill.: Center for Book Culture, Dalkey Archive Press, 2006).

A portion of chapter 10 appeared in Mr. Elkin and the Movies, in New England Review 60 (2009).

Portions of chapter 11 appeared in Because Everything Has a Reasonable Explanation: Our Ticket to The Magic Kingdom, the introduction to A Casebook on Stanley Elkins The Magic Kingdom, series editor Robert McLaughlin (Normal, Ill.: Center for Book Culture, Dalkey Archive Press, 2006).

I take this opportunity to thank the Elkin family, especially Joan, for help, information, and encouragement in the research for this project. My gratitude also goes out to the many individuals who have agreed to personal interviews and to those who have communicated with me by telephone, letter, or email during the past six years. The cordial assistance of the Special Collections staff at the Olin Library of Washington University is gratefully acknowledged, as is a James Merrill Library fellowship for research at the Olin. Travel funding from Chancellor Danforth and Loyola University Maryland, and hospitality at Sewanee University, helped to make the journey possible. Summer research assistants Michael Weineke and Jonathan Weedon, funded by the Center for the Humanities at Loyola, helped me to manage and coordinate ever-expanding file drawers. The interlibrary loan staff of the LoyolaNotre Dame Library ably and graciously located and supplied access to rare published items.

Shouting Down the Silence

1 A Sum of Private Frequencies

[I]t is still hisuniquely inflected, Gibson-timbered, a sum of private frequencies and personal resonances, as marked as his thumbsbecause the show must go on and he must be on it.

The Dick Gibson Show

More than a decade after his death in 1995, Stanley Elkins place in twentieth-century literary history appears to be even more in question than it was during the final decade of his life. He emerged from the cultural and literary revolutions of the 1960s as a prominent Young Turk, a radical innovator in both style and theme, whose influence among the literary community was by 1980 almost universally acknowledged. One could confidently have predicted that he would be recognized by future generations as a leading figure in the literary history of his time. He won many major awards; in his roles as mentor, university teacher, presenter and leader at a variety of influential writers conferences, and extraordinarily successful reader on the lecture circuit, he impressed his force and example on an entire generation of younger writers. He was arguably by 1980 among the dozen most influential fiction writers in North America. As his work matured and his themes took on a greater seriousness during the 1980s, however, Elkin watched in disappointment as his sales plummeted and as other writers emerged as the eras leading stylists. As his health deteriorated, his novels were remaindered and shortly after his death a posthumous national Book Critics Circle Award was more a recognition of the value of Elkins oeuvre than of his final novels individual merits. Elkins novels and collections of stories eased out of print, to be issued by Dalkey Archive Press in an effort to keep the work available long enough for readers to catch up with the talent of this truly extraordinary, and brilliant, literary innovator.