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Boswell: A Modern Comedy


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Boswell is Stanley Elkin's first and funniest novel: the comic odyssey of a twentieth-century groupie who collects celebrities as his insurance policy against death. James Boswell—strong man, professional wrestler (his most heroic match is with the Angel of Death)—is a con man, gate crasher, and moocher of epic talent. He is also the "hero of one of the most original first novels in years" (Oakland Tribune)—a man on the make for all the great men of his time—his logic being that if you can't be a lion, know a pride of them. Can he cheat his way out of morality?

Details

ISBN-10 1-56478-174-7
ISBN-13 9781564781741
Publication Date Apr 1999
Nb of pages 372
Dimensions 5.5 x 8 in.

Reviews

Press Reviews

New York Times
Brilliant. . . . His sentences are long riffs of jazz; the words swarm and gather; the prose is exuberantly betroped, exhilaratingly de trop.

Book Week
It is clear that Elkin writes marvelously well. Humor explodes in bursts. Scenes crackle with gusto and imaginative fertility, and his people pop off the page with overabundant flesh.

Time
One of America's most inventive comic writers.



Quotations

One of our most original voices.
-John Irving

Stanley Elkin is such a down-to-earth and funny writer that how smart he is sneaks up on you.
-John Casey

Hilarious and brilliant.
-Alan Harrington

There are moments in Boswell which indelibly mark Stanley Elkin as a great creative talent.
-Terry Southern

Pushing the envelope has always been Stanley Elkin's stock-in-trade. . . . If we didn't have him to read, we'd need to invent him. But we couldn't come close.
-Richard Ford

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Genres : Fiction : Jewish-American
Genres : Fiction : United States and Canada
Countries : United States of America


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