Customer Reviews

Mrs. Ted Bliss (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was saddended to learn that Stanley Elkin had passed on because his writing in Mrs. Ted Bliss so inspired me to write with more brio, more of a kind of "high" tone of humor, wit, compassion. I adored Mrs. Ted Bliss. It was such a funny idea, the elderly retiree hob-nobbing with drug lords; the feisty little old lady fighting stereotypical tendencies in herself. And, bottom line, the book is hilarious. I cannot recommend it more highly to one and all for a whole bundle of laughs. Mr. Elkin created a masterpiece, one I like to give to friends as a special gift.

Mr. Elkin has a wonderful style, with phrases that you reread and say out loud to yourself, that you remember when you put the book down. But that's about all you remember, because the plot and the characters leave much to be desired. I think Elkin put a little too much into forming the most perfect, most beautiful sentences, and not enough into the actual story. I never cared about what happened to Dorothy, or anyone else in her mundane existance. Literature is not literature if it doesn't move you, and Mrs. Ted Bliss most definetly failed in that regard.

Mrs. Ted Bliss is a widowed woman in a polyester pant suit living her last years in a Miami Beach condominium. When a local drug kingpin buys her dead husband's car, it triggers a remarkable chain of events that brings Mrs. Bliss face-to-face with the premises of her life as a dutiful wife. The authenticity that Elkin brings to Mrs. Bliss' inner dialogue and his characters' speech was so humorous and touching that I frequently had to collar somebody so I could read them the passages out loud. If you like to find the extraordinary in "ordinary" lives, if you have an ear for language, please give yourself and treat and pick up this book.

One of the most distinct voices in (Jewish) American literature, Stanley Elkin, has done it again with Mrs. Ted Bliss. From the title to the final chapter, the reader is forced to examine his/her preceonceptions about age, retirement, sex and social roles, and other stereotypes. Mrs. Ted Bliss, a retired widow with no skills, gets caught in a web of intrigue that leads to the downfall of a drug lord when she sells her car. Mrs. Ted Bliss, however, is no Mrs. Pollifax, ready to karate-chop her way out of danger. Give it a read if you want to laugh out loud.

This book won the "Pulitizer Prize" of literature and its initial pages are full of rave reviews by prestigious literary figures and publications. I wondered why I wasn't wild about this book the way so many readers are. I found it to be slow going. It's said to be hilarious. I guess I have a different sense of humor because it didn't strike me as even mildly funny. The situations were goofy amd clever, but Mr. Elkin dissected them so completely with his verbal virtuousity that he buried the humor.

In general, that's the problem I had with the book. There's no doubt the author has a fantastic gift for the English language, and bringing it to bear on an ordinary elderly Jewish widow is a great concept. However, I felt his elaborate descriptions of Mrs. Bliss's thoughts, feelings and character got in the way of getting to know her. When the sentences are so long and full of parentheses that I have to go back to the beginning to remind myself what the original point was, it breaks my focus and distances me.

Mrs. Bliss was shaken out of her narrow rigid routine and began to see and understand more about life and about herself. However, I don't feel I took the trip with her. Because she often doesn't understand why she does things, I was clueless about how or why she was going to react from one minute to the next. That's the fun of this book for readers who can just sit back, listen and enjoy. They're the ones who'll find it hilarious. For us more compulsive folks, it's boring and frustrating. I didn't form any kind of relationship with Mrs. Bliss, didn't particularliy like any of the characters and didn't care what happened to them. I think if I was Jewish and/or closer to retirement age I would have picked up on more of the book's subtleties. This is a book each reader needs to sample for themselves. However, even though it got in the way for me at times, the beautifully crafted language is a treat for anyone who loves words.

If I were Jewish I think I would find this book offensive. I am not Jewish, and I found it to be boring. The book may, in fact, be well written, but it is witten about an ordinary eldely Jewish women doing things and having thoughts that most anti-semitic people associate with Jews.

This is the first book we read for our book club and only three people made it all the way through. Most people gave up after the first chapter. I read the story and found it to be extremely boring and found the synopsis on the back of the cover to be very deceiving. I expected Dorothy to become an exciting person who would be involved in exciting adventures, instead the story dragged on until the climax - the tornado at which point I had given up all hope of redemption for the book.

Well at first I did catch on about the book when I first started reading it. The more I read the book the better if got to my understanding. It is a very good book. I could relate to some of the things that she was talking about. Mrs. Ted Bliss is a smart woman but does not quite realize that she is. It is just a great book.

Thank you Stanley Elkin