Volume 6, Number 1 · February 3, 1966
From Out of Nowhere
By John Thompson
Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers
by Stanley Elkin
Random House, 272 pp., $4.95
The Nowhere City
by Alison Lurie
Coward-McCann, 276 pp., $4.50
How bitter must be the wailing of one of those souls lingering beyond Lethe, when Stanley Elkin beckons it to leave Elysium, to return a second time and bear the sluggish body! The shade of Achilles said it was better to be the slave of a poor farmer than to be king of the dead, but Achilles, not having read the stories in Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, could not have known how miserable life can be in the vision of a really determined author. Perhaps Thersites, the bandy-legged and pin-headed, envious, becuffed, tear-stained, might have understood; but I wonder if even he would have drunk the dark blood willingly just for a chance to live again in one of these nine stories.
Review, 1123 words
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