Pieces of soap
Subtitle: essays
By: Stanley Elkin
Contributors: Lipsyte, Sam, 1968- writer of introduction
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 404
ISBN-13: 9781941040379
Subjects: American essays
Description: With a wickedly witty touch, Elkin's essays takes readers on a tour of American life in the 20th century. Stanley Elkin was one of our great American writers. A divine exploiter of the idiocies and intricacies of our language, as John Irving put it, and nowhere is that more clear than this collection of essays, which find Elkin wresting hilarity and heartbreak from the most unlikely of sources.
Notes: "With a new introduction by Sam Lipsyte"--Book cover.

First published: New York : Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Table of contents: title: Part one:; title: Performance and reality --; title: Plot --; title: Acts of scholarship --; title: The law of average --; title: What's in a name? --; title: The first amendment as an art form --; title: The muses are heard --; title: An American in California --; title: At the Academy Awards --; title: The rest of the novel --; title: Pieces of soap -- -- Part two:; title: A preface to the sixties (but I am getting ahead of myself) --; title: Introduction to The best American Short Stories of 1980 --; title: Foreword to Arthur Schnitzler, plays and stories --; title: A le recherche du whoopee cushion --; title: Introduction to Early Elkin --; title: Introduction to The six-year-old man --; title: Introduction to The coffee room --; title: Foreword to Criers and kibitzers, kibitzers and criers --; title: My father's life --; title: My middle age --; title: Why I live where I live --; title: Where I read what I read --; title: A Kinsey report --; title: My shirt tale --; title: Summer: a true confession --; title: The mild one --; title: My tuxedo: a meditation --; title: Three meetings --; title: Some overrated masterpieces.