Van Gogh's Room at Arles: Three Novellas - Hardcover

Elkin, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1562829378 ISBN 13: 9781562829377

Publisher: Hyperion, 1993

Synopsis

In a trio of novellas, a wheelchair-bound professor presides over an out-of-control student party, the spurned fiance+a7e of the Prince of England pens her expose+a7 memoirs, and the winner of a foundation grant searches for his scholarly identity among his academic peers.

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Reviews

All three novellas in Elkin's ( The MacGuffin ) latest collection are occasionally funny, often painful and always beautifully written. As usual with this author's work, the plot is not really the point; his main concern is his protagonists' inner landscapes, conveyed in rich and convoluted monologues. The tales themselves are simple: a wheelchair-bound political geographer, deserted by his wife on the eve of his annual class party, tries to cope in "Her Sense of Timing"; a commoner formerly engaged to the Crown Prince of England explains the circumstances of her morganatic relationship in " Town Crier Exclusive, Confessions of a Manque: 'How Royals Found me "Unsuitable" to Marry Their Larry,' "; and in the title story, a teacher from Booth Tarkington Community College (BTCC), surrounded by the stars of academe at a foundation in Arles, searches for his intellectual bearings. The characters' musings are peppered with comic asides ranging from the political geographer's attempts to formulate an answering-machine message that will deter burglars to the BTCC professor's bungled French translations ("because Madame Celli had become invisible in the laundry two horses must begin to be"). In Elkin's hands, this trio's probings into (respectively) their physical, social and intellectual constraints are very human inquiries into the ever crotchety workings of fate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In "Her Sense of Timing," a professor of political geography paralyzed by a "degenerative neurological disease" (obviously the multiple sclerosis that also affects Elkin) tries to host a party without the assistance of his wife, who has just left him. In the book's title story, an inept associate professor from an obscure community college finds himself at a scholarly retreat in Arles with some of the biggest names in academe (including a crippled geographer). Inexplicably, he has been assigned the most desirable accommodations: Van Gogh's old room. Sandwiched between these two classic Elkin works is a British tabloid parody, "Town Crier Exclusive, Confessions of a Princess Manque," clearly something of a technical exercise for an author who has built his reputation on his mastery of American idioms. This well-balanced collection stands as a worthy companion to Elkin's first three-novella set, Search es and Seizures.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1562829378
• ISBN 13: 9781562829377
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312