The Dick Gibson Show

Look who's on the "Dick Gibson Radio Show": Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline—except for cloud cover and fog banks"). Bernie Perk, the burning pharmacist. Henry Harper, the nine-year-old orphan millionaire, terrified of being adopted. The woman whose life revolves around pierced lobes. An evil hypnotist. Swindlers. Con-men. And Dick Gibson himself. Anticipating Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Springer, Stanley Elkin creates a brilliant comic world held together by American manias and maniacs in all their forms, and a character who perfectly understands what Americans want and gives it to them.

"Elkin's prose is alive, with its wealth of detail and specifically American metaphors, and the surreal elements in the narrative are tightly controlled. . . . It's compulsively readable and exhilarating." (Library Journal 2-1-99)

"This is Elkin's third novel and his best—a funny, melancholy, frightening, scabrous, absolutely American compendium that may turn out to be our classic about radio." (Joseph McElroy, New York Times Book Review 2-21-71)

"Elkin is one of America's great tragicomic geniuses." (Robert Coover)

"A divine exploiter of the idiocies and intricacies of our language." (John Irving)

"A hero of American letters, a great artist, a stylist without peer." (Tim O'Brien)

New York Times Book Review

"This is Elkin's third novel and his best--a funny, melancholy, frightening, scabrous, absolutely American compendium that may turn out to be our classic about radio."

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