The Franchiser [Paperback]

Stanley; Foreword by Gass, William Elkin (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: David R. Godine; 2nd edition (1988)
• ASIN: B000IVYXKY
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

More 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 & Seizures (1974), and The MacGuffin (1991). His book of novellas, Van Gogh's Room at Arles, was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elkin at the height of his art, August 28, 2005

By 

B Brown (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Franchiser: A Novel (American Literature Series) (Paperback)

At one point in the Franchiser, the book's central character, Ben Flesh, says with a whimpering exhale: I want my remission back. Ben's flesh, literally, and Ben's small empire of franchises face imminent death in a 1970s America of rolling blackouts and gas shortages. Ben has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis; his franchising fund, controlled by his godcousins, has been diagnosed sub-performing and unfit.

The back-story of Ben's franchise building ability is laid out in a wonderful early chapter, but what draws us to Elkin, and why we'll read anything he wrote is the language-writing that is grabbed by the jugular and dragged like prey across the page. Like all his characters, those in The Franchiser speak in a colorful and idiosyncratic vernacular, and in Ben's case the dogmatisms of business school and manias of endless entrepreneurship. If you are a Midwesterner, especially one from Kansas City, you will smile at Flesh's analysis á la Roland Barthes of the Crown Center Mall. Read Elkin's Franchiser: laugh, cry, and marvel at it all.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Stanley Elkin and won't be the last!, April 13, 2011

By 

A. C. Frye "internet only shopper" (Boston) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Franchiser (Kindle Edition)

I read an interview with Stanley Elkin where he mentioned William Gass as one of the writers he admired and as a result I went and bought a copy of the "The Tunnel" completely forgetting Stanley Elkin. Luckily I retraced my steps and have discovered a new slippery slope to slide down. It is funny in a dark way and a light way and is written at many different levels, but Elkin digs deep into the American way of life and the pursuit of happiness and writes beautiful prose. I read a lot of books at one time because I have a wide variety of tastes and with Kindle keeping track for me can peruse my reading list like a kid in the candy store. But once in a while there is that book that just grabs my attention and I drop everything else, not being able to put it down. I look forward to no doubt a few more thousand miles in the Franchiser's Cadillac and enjoying every minute of the ride.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the most accurate Bicentennial picture of America., February 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Franchiser (Nonpareil Books) (Paperback)

You won't come acoss a more side-splittingly funny portrait of America in 1976 than what Elkin gives us here. I don't know which is the more: the humor in America that is depressing or the depression that is humorous; in any event, the book is a must for anyone who likes his or her humor bitersweet, his or her prose lush, and his or her mind to be stimulated and entertained!