reading for MFA workshop Muy ácido, Lean estos cuentos, de los mejores que he leído en mucho tiempo vale, no todos son igual de maravillosos, pero solo por tres de ellos Llorones y kibitzers, kibitzers y llorones, El invitado y Poética para acosadores deberían leerlo todos ustedes.
De hecho, de los nueve relatos que reúne el libro, solo hay dos que me gustaron poquito,
Y pensar que Elkin solo tiene dos libros publicados en España, un tío que ha ganado dos veces el National Books Circle Award, que ha sido finalista del PEN Faulkner Award y del National Book Award, admirado por autores como Richard Ford, Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, William H.
Gass y, no menos importante, requeteadmirado a partir de ahora también por mí mismo, Editores, por favor, hagan su trabajo y corrijan este gran error,
“Su hijo en la tumba, Bajo toda aquella tierra. Bajo todo aquel polvo. En una caja metálica, Hermética, había dicho el director de la funeraria, Ay, Dios mío, hermética, Sellada al vacío. Como un bote de café, Su hijo estaba bajo tierra y en la calle los maniquíes de los escaparates lucían los modelos de la temporada próxima.Lo que les digo, lean estos cuentos y comprenderán mi sorpresa, Una sorpresa que se acrecentó al descubrir que uno de los cuentos, el que en España da título al libro en USA escogieron el de otro de los cuentos: Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, ya lo había leído en la nunca suficientemente bien valorada antología del cuento norteamericano de Richard Ford y, aunque me gustó, no me alertó sobre el autor al que olvidé de inmediato.
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Bueno, no quiero ser muy duro con mi yo de hace tanto tiempo, venga, me perdono, pelillos a la mar,
“Era la cama más grande en la que iba a dormir jamás, Siempre pensaba en esos términos, De pronto, un cigarrillo cualquiera se convertía en su cabeza en el mejor o en el peor que se fumaría ese día.Y qué se van a encontrar aquí Pues, presentados con un estilo soberbio, original, lírico en ocasiones, se las verán con todo un plantel de perdedores, descentrados y patéticos rebeldes sin causa, todos masculinos y judíos, que el autor disfruta en poner ante situaciones difíciles o peculiares, aunque cotidianas, creando una turbadora atmósfera de desastre inminente, más turbadora cuanto más humorístico, corrosivo y negro es el tono.
Ejecutado con inusual soltura, un acto tan cotidiano como atarse los cordones de los zapatos podía ser recordado para siempre, Esto, indirectamente, teñía de tristeza su visión de la vida, pues sabía que a cada momento estaba viviendo experiencias que no volverían a repetirse nunca.
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Un puñado de capullos a los que Elkin golpea para volverlos a levantar con el único propósito de darles un porrazo aún más fuerte del que también se recuperan solo para recibir un nuevo golpe, y así sufren y no saben cómo protegerse, se encaminan al precipicio y no saben cómo parar, hacen justo lo que no deberían hacer y no pueden evitarlo.
No sé ustedes, pero yo no puedo evitar gozar viendo cómo estos humanos se joden la vida de esa forma tan malsana e incoherente, aunque el gozo sea casi siempre agridulce y puede que hasta un poco autocompasivo.
Parece que no hay esperanza, hay que afrontarlo, amigos,
“Yo soy Push el acosador, y odio a los niños nuevos y a los mariquitas, a los listos y a los tontos, a los niños ricos, a los pobres, a los niños con gafas, a los que hablan raro, a los presumidos, a los que se las dan de buenos y a los que se las dan de listos, a los que pasan lápices y a los que riegan las plantas.This is a great collection by Elkin who shines with the darkly comic short, Standouts for me were "I Lookout for Ed Wolfe", "Perlmutter at the East Pole" and "A Poetics for Bullies", These are wonderful stories full of the humanness of people just trying to cope with life, Humorous, touching, and all that, They are beautifully and meticulously written, Some stories remind me a bit of Malamud, Regardless, they are stories that are worth the time to be familiar with, It wouldn't kill you to read this book, These are some of the most heart wrenching American tales of disease and death and isolation and despair, but at the same time, they burst with life and language that no other author can provide.
Y a los tullidos, sobre todo a los tullidos, No amo a nadie que sea amado, . . Me habría gustado tener otros ojos, otras manos, una madre en el supermercado, . . Saben qué me hace llorar La Declaración de Independencia, Todos los hombres nacen iguales, Precioso.
Critics often label Elkin as a comic writer, but these are not comedies, They are, perhaps, humorous tragedies, certainly not dark comedies, in that hope is lost for any sort of redemption for any character found within.
But the stories and the language show so much of the intricacies of the stuff of life, that one gets the sense that Elkin's message, above all else, was that this world is shit, but it's good and interesting and pleasing enough for one to be crazy to stop fighting for life.
Elkin himself, chronically unhealthy, had to fight every moment,
In "Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers" Elkin gets at, so fully, the state of mind of a man mourning the death of his son, the awkward embarrassment, jealousy and vengeful rage, all set in a small town grocery with its sad depths of social strata and its paranoia in its tiny profit margin.
The man holds up the memory of his son above all reproach and finding the note which has so much meaning to him, but says nothing at all, strikes a resonant chord with me.
"I Look Out For Ed Wolfe," an orphan's tale of losing and selling everything, reducing a man to his cash value, shows a more clinical American Psycho where life is confined to collections, sales, haggles and bids.
In the end, Ed Wolfe, a white boy enacts some craziness at a black juke joint, puts a girl up on an auction block and holds her hand, which is more vital than his ever could be.
"Among The Witnesses," the tale of a Catskills resort cheapo shocked by a little girl's
drowning under the watch of an underage lifeguard, follows Preminger, a flat man, droning on to lay Norma.
Everything is else is an inconvenience, Everyone wants an excuse to be scared home, including Bieberman, drunk on Schnapps on the porch,
"The Guest" is a drug riddled multiple personality rant of a bum jazz house sitter, in which Elkin gets the cadence of being alone and talking to yourself, thinking to yourself, exactly right on perfect.
Bertie's rebellion is selfish, wasteful and lazy, He will always be looking for a patron,
"In The Alley," the story of a man with a death sentence from his doctor who just won't die, shows the awkwardness and alienation and complete loneliness of dying.
He's never fought the disease, only worried that he hasn't died, and that his diagnosis has not been fulfilled, like Norman Mailer walking through Harlem at midnight, but getting beat.
"On a Field, Rampant" is a forcefully vague story about a young man bequeathed fine clothes and a medallion who vaguely travels the world, apart from Khardov the watch repairman father, duping plebes into thinking he's royalty.
In the end, he has built up a rage against these people, the dock workers and whores he belongs with, like someone trying to climb out of The Dubliners or suppressing their Jewishness in Roth or Bellow to live as a Habsburg.
In "A Poetics for Bullies" Push has got the whole neighborhood, his world, figured out and he knows his damage, but John Williams is too perfect to fit into that world and we can all relate to Push's distaste for a boy with such nice clothing and stories and a penchant for charity.
"Get the rich boys in your sights and, . . " Push is victorious in some ritualized playground circle, when he resits, finally, Williams, who must please all, but never Push,
"Cousing Poor Lesley and the Lousy People" is as Bronx nostalgia tale of bizarre losers, telling dirty jokes to ugly girls at City College parties.
Eugene Lapransky's a sort of stupid guru in his exile in the apartment above his mother's house and his Black Matt ramblings, They all end up locked up or sleazy or dead like Poor Lesley who never got to fight, only to maneuver,
"Perlmutter at the East Pole" is a little dis to New York as the last place you'd look for meaning, and the last place you'd find it.
Perlmutter's pliable New Yorkers depress and disappoint him, from cabbies to Rose Gold and the Union Square Park nest of vapid speakers, Short story collections are a problem to rate, Some deservedbut I think overallmakes sense, This was not as strong as his later novels, Read like period pieces. Didn't like the first one but read on, No other story in this collection quite matches "Push" in style or execution of concept, but there's plenty of humor and jazz to be found in several of the better ones, particularly the closer, which seems less beholden to naturalism than do some of the less exuberant attempts.
I'm not sure when Elkin wrote which of these pieces, but the way they're assembled here allows them to gain momentum as the reader pages through.
Stanley Elkins stories are set at the borderline of realism and postmodernism but he always remains fresh, highly original and scathingly sardonic.
Would a crier listen to another mans complaints Could a kibitzer kid a kidder But it didnt mean anything, he thought, Not the jokes, not the grief, It didnt mean anything. They were like birds making noises in a tree, But try to catch them in a deal, Theyd murder you.
Thats a portrait of modern society,
Guest is the beat generation heroics turned inside out,
On a Field, Rampant is a postmodern fairytale of the prince in exile,
Cousin Poor Lesley and the Lousy People is a nostalgic trip through the alienated comingofage scenes,
Perlmutter at the East Pole is a mocking treatise on the meaning of life,
The most perfidious instrument in all human language is the question, There is no room or time in life for questions, Questions are the breeding ground of dissension, atheistic pestilence and war, Look at your tragic secular literature: Faust is punished for asking questions, Oedipus is. Hell is a questioners answer,
So get you ideas “from a popular song, Thats where the ideas are, ” Stanley Elkin is the king of writing about the half glass empty, All his characters ride a delusional wave, seeking meaning in a fastmoving whirlwind where humanity is elusive and pain is prevalent, This collection of existential comedies is full of sad souls meandering urban spaces like dirty laundry left behind in the laundromat, Bodegas turn into temples of remorse, City parks become doomridden sanctuaries, Apartments turn into asylums. And every story feels like a complicated joke with a heartbruising punchline, reading like Beckett on the Borscht Belt, Metaphor is everything with Elkin, Not a mediocre story in the bunch, but my favorites: 'Cries amp Kibitzers, Kibitzers amp Criers', 'In the Alley', 'Poetics for Bullies', and 'Perlmutter at the East Pole.
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Some favorite passages:
"Every day they came to eat their lunch and make their noises, Like cowboys on television hanging up their gun belts to go to a dance, " Criers amp Kibitzers
"'But I tell you this friends, I would rather be a mustached bum than cleanshaven clerk, I'll work. Sure I will. When they pay anarchists! When they subsidize the hip! When they give grants to throw bombs! When they shell out for gainsaying, ' Bertie pulled the curtain and turned on the faucet, The rush of water was like applause, " The Guest
"He held in contempt all those who professed disenchantment with the drugs they had been raised on, and frequently went back to rediscover the old pleasures of marijuana, as a sentimental father might chew some of his boy's bubble gum.
" The Guest
Sometimes an author who is very obviously right up your alley inexplicably manages to slip underneath your radar, and when you discover him years later you find yourself faced with a huge backlist and gnashing your teeth that you did not come across this astonishing body of work earlier.
Stanley Elkin is just such a case for me by all rights, I should have stumbled over him in the early to mid eighties when I was discovering contemporary American literature for myself and started reading the likes of Thomas Pynchon, John Barth and Robert Coover.
Instead, I first enountered him as late asthrough a series of posts on one of the blogs I follow,
I read Boswell, Stanley Elkins first novel, a few months back, and while I liked it, I had some difficulties seeing why everyone kept saying that it was so funny.
No such problem with Criers amp Kibitzers, Kibitzers amp Criers, Elkins first collection of stories some of which predate Boswell which had me laughing out loud a lot, even or, coming to think about it, in particular in places where the subject matter of the story did not appear to lend itself to humour at all.
This starts off with the title story, about a store owner who returns to work after the death of his son the story manages to be at the same time very funny, when the protagonists paranoia runs rampant, suspecting everyone and their grandmother of robbing him blind, and heartbreakingly sad, the portrait of a man whose implicit trust in the benevolence of life has been shattered and who tries to carry on in the face of despair.
“Criers amp Kibitzers, Kibitzers amp Criers” is, like most of the nine stories in this collection and as Stanley Elkin himself remarks upon in his Preface to theedition, “right bang smack dab in the middle of realism,” something hed outgrow later, and which is already apparent in some of the stories here, and it is certainly no coincidence that those tend to be the best of the lot.
The volumes stories also establishes the mood for what is to come, its distinctive interweaving of farce and tragedy can be found to a varying degree and played out in different ways in all of the following stories.
My personal favourite is “Poetics for Bullies,” a story whose driving, insistent rhythm grabs you at your jacket lapels right from the start and then pushes and pummels you relentlessly for the entire duration of itspages.
There is something very Rabelaisian about it and, I suspect, about Elkins writing in general, in the largerthanlife characters, the exuberance of the writing and the way even the apparently most stable conventions and preconceptions are tumbling and turned topsyturvy.
In the case of this particular story we end up thoroughly disliking the character who is a shining example of pretty much every virtue imaginable and rooting for his antagonist, a lowlife bully named Push, even wondering if bullies might not indeed be fulfulling a very useful social function “Poetics for Bullies” is brilliant on every level and alone worth getting this collection.
And while none of the other stories is quite as good, there is no really weak story here either, Im really looking forward to reading more from Stanley Elkin.
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