Van Gogh's Room at Arles

by Stanley Elkin

Overview

 

Three witty and poignant novellas from a twentieth-century literary master at the peak of his craft Van Gogh’s Room at Arles is Stanley Elkin’s second collection of novellas, a razor-sharp exploration of three characters suffering under the weight of intellectual, physical, and social burdens. In the collection’s title story, Elkin writes of an insecure professor’s scholarly retreat with the most accomplished members of his field. “Her Sense of Timing” is a story of a man who, though confined to a wheelchair, attempts to throw a party without the help of his absent wife. And in “Confessions of a Princess Manque,” Elkin writes of the Prince of Wales’s love affair with a common woman in a parody of a sensationalist tabloid story. 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.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453204566
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	10/26/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Stanley Elkin (1930–1995) was an award-winning author of novels, short stories, and essays. Born in the Bronx, Elkin received his BA and PhD from the University of Illinois and in 1960 became a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis where he taught until his death. His critically acclaimed works include the National Book Critics Circle Award–winners George Mills (1982) and Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995), as well as the National Book Award finalists The Dick Gibson Show (1972), Searches and Seizures (1974), and The MacGuffin (1991). His book of novellas, Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award.

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Her Sense of Timing
• Town Crier Exclusive, Confessions of a Princess Manqué: “How Royals Found Me ‘Unsuitable’ to Marry Their Larry”
• Van Gogh’s Room at Arles
• A Biography of Stanley Elkin

Editorial Reviews

All three novellas in Elkin's ( The MacGuffin ) latest collection are occasionally funny, often painful and always beautifully written. As usual with this author's work, the plot is not really the point; his main concern is his protagonists' inner landscapes, conveyed in rich and convoluted monologues. The tales themselves are simple: a wheelchair-bound political geographer, deserted by his wife on the eve of his annual class party, tries to cope in ``Her Sense of Timing''; a commoner formerly engaged to the Crown Prince of England explains the circumstances of her morganatic relationship in `` Town Crier Exclusive, Confessions of a Manque: `How Royals Found me ``Unsuitable'' to Marry Their Larry,' ''; and in the title story, a teacher from Booth Tarkington Community College (BTCC), surrounded by the stars of academe at a foundation in Arles, searches for his intellectual bearings. The characters' musings are peppered with comic asides ranging from the political geographer's attempts to formulate an answering-machine message that will deter burglars to the BTCC professor's bungled French translations (``because Madame Celli had become invisible in the laundry two horses must begin to be''). In Elkin's hands, this trio's probings into (respectively) their physical, social and intellectual constraints are very human inquiries into the ever crotchety workings of fate. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In ``Her Sense of Timing,'' a professor of political geography paralyzed by a ``degenerative neurological disease'' (obviously the multiple sclerosis that also affects Elkin) tries to host a party without the assistance of his wife, who has just left him. In the book's title story, an inept associate professor from an obscure community college finds himself at a scholarly retreat in Arles with some of the biggest names in academe (including a crippled geographer). Inexplicably, he has been assigned the most desirable accommodations: Van Gogh's old room. Sandwiched between these two classic Elkin works is a British tabloid parody, ``Town Crier Exclusive, Confessions of a Princess Manque,'' clearly something of a technical exercise for an author who has built his reputation on his mastery of American idioms. This well-balanced collection stands as a worthy companion to Elkin's first three-novella set, Search es and Seizures .-- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Library Journal

Elkin's at his wicked, rambling best in this trio of novellas. The first, "Her Sense of Timing," begins with the abrupt end of a long marriage. Professor Schiff's wife leaves him, in spite of the fact that he's nearly 60 and disabled, on the eve of his annual party for his graduate students. While Schiff complains a great deal about her bad timing, the story's actual sense of time is the excruciatingly slow pace of a man with only limited control of his limbs. While Schiff has to plot his labored movements with the care and precision of a man under siege, his mind seethes with high-voltage, venomous clarity. In the next tale, Elkin inhabits the wonderfully cynical mind of a young British woman who easily seduces the virginal Prince of England, who then giddily proposes to her at a press conference. ""Town Crier" Exclusive, Confessions of a Princess Manque" is her tell-all about their brief engagement and her bizarre interaction with the goofy royal family. And, finally, the title piece is a hilarious fish-out-of-water story about an Indiana community-college professor who is awarded a fellowship to spend five weeks in Arles with a group of far more distinguished and artful academics. Ensconced in the yellow room made famous by Van Gogh, he begins to echo the painter's despair with his own brand of mental distortion and emotional breakdown. A marvelously vinegary triptych of tragicomedies.

Donna Seaman

"All three novellas in Elkin's latest collection are occasionally funny, often painful and always beautifully written." -- PW

Dalkey Archive Press

"This well-balanced collection stands as a worthy companion to Elkin's first three-novella set, Search es and Seizures." -- Library Journal

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher