A Bad Man
by Stanley Elkin
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A black market dealer must reconcile his lifetime of sins as he faces hard time in prison A born salesman, Leo Feldman can peddle anything from clothing and appliances to prostitutes, guns, and drugs. Although guilty of myriad crimes, Feldman is sentenced to prison as the result of a clerical error that charged him with a crime he did not commit. Now, completely vulnerable to the inmates who surround him--and to the stern Warden Fisher--Feldman must come to terms with what it means to be show more jailed not for his crimes, but for his character. Wry and insightful, A Bad Man is an engrossing story of an antihero's journey through the twisted world of an unforgiving penal system. This ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate and from the Stanley Elkin archives at Washington University in St. Louis. show lessTags
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Leo Feldman, propriétaire d'un grand bazar est condamné à un an de prison pour avoir rendu divers petits services.Cynique et apparemment dépourvu de sentiments Feldman va devoir affronter l'hostilité de ses compagnons de prison.Scènes violentes, sinistres, d'un humour noir particulièrement corrosif... ce roman âpre et saisissant d'un écrivain dont le génie commence enfin à être reconnu à la puissance d'un véritable 'Voyage au bout de la nuit' américain
I loved this when I read it, but I can't remember why. It's still on my shelves because I thought I'd read it again, but I'm a bit scared I'll change my mind about it. So it waits.
I loved this when I read it, but I can't remember why. It's still on my shelves because I thought I'd read it again, but I'm a bit scared I'll change my mind about it. So it waits.
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34+ Works 2,652 Members
Stanley Elkin was an American Jewish novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He was born on May 11, 1930. Elkin steadily and quietly worked his way into the higher ranks of contemporary American novelists. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, but grew up in Chicago and has spent most of his life since in the Midwest, receiving his Ph.D. in show more English from the University of Illinois with a dissertation on William Faulkner. He was a member of the English faculty at Washington University in St. Louis from 1960 until his death, and battled multiple sclerosis for most of his adult life. Reviewers found Elkin's first novel, Boswell: A Modern Comedy (1964), the story of an uninhibited modern-day counterpart of the eighteenth-century biographer, hilarious and promising, while the stories in Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers (1966) established Elkin as a writer capable of writing short stories of textbook-anthology quality. The ironically entitled A Bad Man (1967) is about a Jewish department store magnate who deliberately arranges to have himself convicted of several misdeeds so that he can experience the real world of a prison and carry on his own war with the warden in what takes on the dimensions of a burlesque existential allegory. The Dick Gibson Show (1971) uses the host of a radio talk show as a way of showing fancifully what it means to live "at sound barrier," and both Searchers and Seizures (1973) and The Living End (1979) are triptychs of related stories verging on surrealism. The Franchiser (1976), generally considered Elkin's best novel before George Mills, uses the story of a traveling salesman of franchises to show the flattening homogenization of American life. But as usual, what happens in this Elkin novel is less important than the way in which the story is told. Elkin won the National Book Critics Circle Award on two occasions: for George Mills in 1982 and for Mrs. Ted Bliss, his last novel, in 1995. The MacGuffin was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award for Fiction. Although he enjoyed high critical praise, his books never enjoyed popular success. Elkin died May 31, 1995 of a heart attack. His manuscripts and correspondence are archived in Olin Library at Washington University in St. Louis. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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