The Living End [Hardcover]

Stanley Elkin (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. (1978)
• ASIN: B000L39FV6
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,190,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The supreme artist in search of an audience, March 19, 2005

By 

A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Living End (Paperback)

A very strangely constructed little novel, Stanley Elkin's "The Living End" is both an afterlife fantasy and a secular meditation on the meaning of God's creation. It's interesting that most authors who write fiction about the state of death portray it as simply a transcended, and usually idealized, form of life, but then again from what other source can they draw their material? Death is the one thing that can't be researched.

"The Living End" begins with what looks like a conventional plot, telling the story of a hapless ordinary man named Ellerbee who owns a liquor store in Minneapolis, has a nagging wife whom he loves nonetheless, and is loyally charitable to his employees. One day he is shot and killed by armed robbers and is spirited away to Heaven--which, although every bit the antiseptic paradise it is rumored, appears in the form of a theme park, like an ecclesiastical Disney World--and then is told, without explanation, that he is being sent directly to Hell.

Hell is total anarchy and chaos, people constantly brutalizing each other or wandering around aimlessly with no structure or schedule to their existence, ultimately desensitized to their environment. After sixty-two years in the inferno--long enough for a guy to deserve to know why he's been sent there--Ellerbee learns that his sentence is a result of having broken some of the more easily breakable commandments, leaving him to ponder the absurdity of having to spend eternity in the abyss for having operated his business on the Sabbath.

In Hell, Ellerbee eventually meets his murderer's accomplice, a man named Ladlehaus who made a great living as a criminal but met his end when the plug was pulled on him while he was in a coma. Through an odd set of circumstances his grave was located in a high school stadium, where the groundskeeper, a man named Quiz, believed the dead man was speaking to him. Quiz, the hilariously perverse protagonist of the novel's second act, imagines the Twin Cities are engaged in a civil war and persuades little boys to play soldiers for him.

The novel comes full circle in Heaven, where Mary, who contemplates the experience of having borne a child while remaining a virgin, and Joseph, who feels cuckolded by God over said child, have reunited with Jesus in a skewed family portrait. God, frustrated with the empty and vain tributes of religion, man's idea of adoration of the divine, gives a "gala" in which, like a temperamental and narcissistic artist berating a public apathetic to his work, he explains the rationale behind his universe and makes his fearsome final decision. Elkin surely wishes he knew the secrets he pretends God to disclose, but he doesn't cheat his reader--the force and style of his expression are more than worth the time and trouble of "The Living End."

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars modern dark comedy at its best, August 17, 2000

By 

andrew pincus (Montclair, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Living End (Paperback)

Unlike the last review on this short novel, I will refrain from giving away the story, in that it's the twists and exchanges that make the novel hunorous. The reader is best off receiving those twist and exchanges from Elkin himself, a master of the english language, of communication and of the humor that can be elicited from words. If for no other reason, you should read this novel to see that skill at work.

All said, I admit that I'm not really sure what this novel is about. I think its purpose is to make us question some of the basic foundations of our existence; why we do what we do each day, why we believe what we believe. It surely pokes some fun at our conceptions of religion, history, politics, morals, values and the role of God. It is so ludicrous at times that it seems, at first glance, quite meaningless. But I could not help but think about it long after I finished it. (Certain images and exchanges lingered for years). In total, I have read The Living End maybe a dozen times, and each time I read it, I pick up something new.

Read this book with an open mind. And then read it again.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Back in print ...About Time!, August 30, 2004

By 

Michael Saul "shut up" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Living End (Lannan Selection) (Paperback)

This is Elkin's best work in my opinion. It is sad, funny, chewy, and ridiculous. The humor is so dark you might need a flashlight to make your way but is worth it. Elkin paints hysterical portraits of all your favorite New Testament all-stars. I am so glad that this is back in print and you should be to. If you like Elkin please buy this so his work will stay in print.