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blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Achieving Greatness
Elkin’s comedy in all his novels is based on his observation of unusual ‘types’ in unfamiliar situations: the kindly but hapless peripatetic small businessman; the New York Jewish widow retired in Spanish Florida; the criminal ‘only Jew in town’ who likes it that way; the itinerant talk-show radio host who would like to murder his listeners; the rabbi who finds his calling doing nothing but burials in the marshes of New Jersey. All are off-beat, slightly grotesque, and, well, charming despite it all.
Elkin’s literary ‘formula’ is remarkable. Through his skill in keeping his characters human, the reader gets to understand how they get to be the way they have become. There is method in their madnesses; they have purposes which are understandable even if the methods used to achieve them are mis-directed and less than effective. Even in Boswell, his first novel, the reprehensible, con-man protagonist, James Boswell, is likeable in his inadequacies. His failure is his success, or, just as aptly, he achieves success in his failure.
“Moses, Jesus, Marx, Einstein and Freud - the five greatest Jews.” If James Boswell could not achieve the glow of their degree of celebrity, he could at least warm his feet in its heat. Reputation is the foundation of civilisation, is it not? And that depends on whom and what you claim to know and do, not whom you actually know and what you actually do. Self-promotion is the source of reputation and therefore civilisation’s most valuable skill.
And Boswell certainly has achieved a reputation - a celebrity for chasing celebrity. The fact that what he really craves is his lost family and familial love makes his life a tragedy. No amount of celebrity can meet his need for affection. But his self-consciousness of the fact allows him to be comedic. “I am no respector of persons save my own,” he says with a self-aware honesty. It’s a finely tuned literary balancing act; and Elkin consistently pulls it off.
Boswell has a definite contemporary relevance and is more ‘modern’ than Elkin could have conceived it becoming. It’s Trump of course. “I am a strategist, an arranger, a schemer, but there is nothing sinister about me,” he admits. He really doesn’t consider himself evil in any way. And he’s right: what you see us what you get. He is a victim of circumstances in his own mind not a villain. His goal in life is constituted by the activities he undertakes. He cares little about the quality of result, just the doing, the being at the centre of the action, more importantly at the centre of attention. His celebrity is his claim to celebrity. Is it his fault that he craves the spotlight? He had a deprived childhood.
Boswell’s mentor is the renowned Dr. Leon Herlitz, an identifier and promoter of talent. This Roy Cohn figure knows exactly what to make of Boswell, the teenager and sets him on his life’s course: “All right, why not? I have made doctors, scientists, bankers, artists, presidents. Why not a bum? Why not a great bum?” The greatest bum the world has ever known. Yes, this is also greatness. One will never be unrecognised in a crowd ever again. Love is uncertain and ends in death; notoriety is forever, or at least for long enough for death to be defeated in its finality.
Herlitz has no doubt about the specific talent of his protege: “You’re an utzer.” This is a perfect but typically untranslatable Yiddishism for one who needles, whines, bugs, and mixes in where he has no business. A professional ‘nudge’ in other words. He’s always there, either as self-obsessed booster or equally self-obsessed contrarian as the need arises. He is a lapdog licking the hands of the powerful, or a gadfly stinging their necks.
Strangely it is Boswell’s awareness of his finite humanity that saves him from being merely a tragic buffoon. “No one believes in death... Except me,” he says. For him “death is realer than life.” Paradoxically, this acceptance of death is the result of a great virtue which is the source, one realises eventually, of Boswell’s charm - the virtue of hope. One cannot have faith in tomorrow because tomorrow does not exist; it never will exist. So faith in it would be vain. But one can have hope, even for that, no especially for that, which does not exist. And for, of course, something like greatness.
Elkin’s Boswell gives me a new perspective on Trump. Yes, he is arrogant, and vacuous, and self-serving in everything he does. But he is not just a tragic human being. He is also comic. And his comedic traits could just possibly be generated by the same awareness of death which motivates Boswell. Trump has faith in nothing, particularly not in himself. But he does hope; he hopes desperately that the tragedy of his life will be redeemed by the promise made by the real Roy Cohn, namely that he can be the greatest bum of all time.
Elkin’s comedy in all his novels is based on his observation of unusual ‘types’ in unfamiliar situations: the kindly but hapless peripatetic small businessman; the New York Jewish widow retired in Spanish Florida; the criminal ‘only Jew in town’ who likes it that way; the itinerant talk-show radio host who would like to murder his listeners; the rabbi who finds his calling doing nothing but burials in the marshes of New Jersey. All are off-beat, slightly grotesque, and, well, charming despite it all.
Elkin’s literary ‘formula’ is remarkable. Through his skill in keeping his characters human, the reader gets to understand how they get to be the way they have become. There is method in their madnesses; they have purposes which are understandable even if the methods used to achieve them are mis-directed and less than effective. Even in Boswell, his first novel, the reprehensible, con-man protagonist, James Boswell, is likeable in his inadequacies. His failure is his success, or, just as aptly, he achieves success in his failure.
“Moses, Jesus, Marx, Einstein and Freud - the five greatest Jews.” If James Boswell could not achieve the glow of their degree of celebrity, he could at least warm his feet in its heat. Reputation is the foundation of civilisation, is it not? And that depends on whom and what you claim to know and do, not whom you actually know and what you actually do. Self-promotion is the source of reputation and therefore civilisation’s most valuable skill.
And Boswell certainly has achieved a reputation - a celebrity for chasing celebrity. The fact that what he really craves is his lost family and familial love makes his life a tragedy. No amount of celebrity can meet his need for affection. But his self-consciousness of the fact allows him to be comedic. “I am no respector of persons save my own,” he says with a self-aware honesty. It’s a finely tuned literary balancing act; and Elkin consistently pulls it off.
Boswell has a definite contemporary relevance and is more ‘modern’ than Elkin could have conceived it becoming. It’s Trump of course. “I am a strategist, an arranger, a schemer, but there is nothing sinister about me,” he admits. He really doesn’t consider himself evil in any way. And he’s right: what you see us what you get. He is a victim of circumstances in his own mind not a villain. His goal in life is constituted by the activities he undertakes. He cares little about the quality of result, just the doing, the being at the centre of the action, more importantly at the centre of attention. His celebrity is his claim to celebrity. Is it his fault that he craves the spotlight? He had a deprived childhood.
Boswell’s mentor is the renowned Dr. Leon Herlitz, an identifier and promoter of talent. This Roy Cohn figure knows exactly what to make of Boswell, the teenager and sets him on his life’s course: “All right, why not? I have made doctors, scientists, bankers, artists, presidents. Why not a bum? Why not a great bum?” The greatest bum the world has ever known. Yes, this is also greatness. One will never be unrecognised in a crowd ever again. Love is uncertain and ends in death; notoriety is forever, or at least for long enough for death to be defeated in its finality.
Herlitz has no doubt about the specific talent of his protege: “You’re an utzer.” This is a perfect but typically untranslatable Yiddishism for one who needles, whines, bugs, and mixes in where he has no business. A professional ‘nudge’ in other words. He’s always there, either as self-obsessed booster or equally self-obsessed contrarian as the need arises. He is a lapdog licking the hands of the powerful, or a gadfly stinging their necks.
Strangely it is Boswell’s awareness of his finite humanity that saves him from being merely a tragic buffoon. “No one believes in death... Except me,” he says. For him “death is realer than life.” Paradoxically, this acceptance of death is the result of a great virtue which is the source, one realises eventually, of Boswell’s charm - the virtue of hope. One cannot have faith in tomorrow because tomorrow does not exist; it never will exist. So faith in it would be vain. But one can have hope, even for that, no especially for that, which does not exist. And for, of course, something like greatness.
Elkin’s Boswell gives me a new perspective on Trump. Yes, he is arrogant, and vacuous, and self-serving in everything he does. But he is not just a tragic human being. He is also comic. And his comedic traits could just possibly be generated by the same awareness of death which motivates Boswell. Trump has faith in nothing, particularly not in himself. But he does hope; he hopes desperately that the tragedy of his life will be redeemed by the promise made by the real Roy Cohn, namely that he can be the greatest bum of all time.
lep42's review against another edition
3.0
Although this book contain lots of comic bits, which taken separately were quite humorous it was ultimately a tragedy. The sadness of the book and its main' character is encapsulated by "I realized that I knew no number, that although I could give her the unlisted phone number of half the celebrities in New York, I didn't even know the number of a good doctor." Boswell spends his life collecting celebrities and "great" people, but ultimately ends up alone. Stanley Elkin is a genius at characterization and it had some penetrating insights (see the first quote below), and I defiantly want to read more of his work. One negative to the book was I was left wincing at its chauvinism and racial stereotyping.
Quotes:
On Anthropology:
pg. 374 "How many of you have ever stopped to consider what an unspoiled culture actually is? It's one without proper facilities for sanitation, without electricity, without hospitals or a balanced diet or a vaccination program. Anything, in fact, which might extend, longevity by a single day may be said to contribute to cultural spoilage."
On Life:
"To be inside when it was raining, warm it was cold, to be able to sleep, to move your bowels regularly, to throw peanut butter sandwiches at your hunger----this was living. "
Quotes:
On Anthropology:
pg. 374 "How many of you have ever stopped to consider what an unspoiled culture actually is? It's one without proper facilities for sanitation, without electricity, without hospitals or a balanced diet or a vaccination program. Anything, in fact, which might extend, longevity by a single day may be said to contribute to cultural spoilage."
On Life:
"To be inside when it was raining, warm it was cold, to be able to sleep, to move your bowels regularly, to throw peanut butter sandwiches at your hunger----this was living. "
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