The Living End

years ago, during the height of oprah's book club reign of terror, greg proposed that i start my own club at our store, in which i would create a series of stickers to be put on books, larger and more offensive than oprah's, showing my feelings about the book. basically - a thumbs-up for books i lov......more

If Dante Alighieri wrote the sad Divine Comedy then Stanley Elkin contributed the hilarious Divine Tragedy. The merriment is on the black side of mirth though. The first part of the book, The Conventional Wisdom is simply brilliant but further on The Living End becomes a bit inconsistent and uneven.......more

In the afterword of 'The Living End', critic Curtis White pretty much nails what Elkin does in this indulgent, painfully brief yet hilarious short novel: "Artists like Elkin want to tell you something that makes no sense, not even to themselves, but it is precisely because they have given up on the t......more