CRIERS AND KIBITZERS, KIBITZERS AND CRIERS

Our most important novelists were and are important for their short stories, too-Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, O'Hara, et al. Despite the fact that Mr. Elkin's novel Boswell (1964, p. 500) got much less attention than it deserved or than you would expect in a country whose established writers are dying faster than the nearsighted commentators can "discover" replacements, we persist in the opinion that Mr. Elkin has all it takes, and then some — the words, a style and a viewpoint. There are nine short stories here, and, as in Boswell, the recognition of death in life and the outer boundaries of sanity are explored with great skill. I Look Out For Ed Wolf shows, through the title character and With economy, the self-consuming self-absorption of amah whose orphan status has persisted into adulthood. In The Guest, Bertie, "...the last of the go-to-hell-god-damn-its," invades the apartment of married friends while they are on vacation. The destructive pastimes of the drug-addicted little musician, who has made a vocation of every vice, balance a line that swings between high comedy and horror. This rare conjunction is also evident in Cousin Poor Lesley and the Lousy People. The whole collection is memorable. Watch Elkin.