The Open Road Blog

Author's note: I regret that my schedule and that of the Open Road Media discussion of Stanley Elkin as a Jewish-American writer prevent me from providing a new post on this wonderful subject, and I’m grateful to Justin Mitchell for offering to republish an excerpt from my Reading Stanley Elkin which addresses this issue. The excerpt he has chosen incorporates what continues to constitute my best thinking on the issue, and because Reading Stanley Elkin remains one of two critical works devoted exclusively to Elkin’s oeuvre, perhaps that adds something to the standing of my contribution. What that section doesn’t ...

Via Tech Crunch: "Twitter has just rolled out a nifty little feature. Now on anyone’s profile, when you click on the “Following” link, you’ll be able to see exactly how they see Twitter. In other words, you can see the same timeline of tweets that they see when they’re looking at their main feed." Frankly, not sure how much I like this!—Libby

It's always an exciting moment to stumble across a book that makes you cry, makes you think, or makes you fall over with laughter. I lucked out this week and found a humor book that made me do all three! ...

Editor's note: Today we continue our celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month with a new essay by David C. Dougherty on Stanley Elkin's relationship to the Jewish American literary tradition. Dougherty is the author of Shouting Down the Silence: A Biography of Stanley Elkin and professor emeritus of English at Loyola University Maryland. This essay is part of our "Critical Symposium" series, an ongoing effort to include in-depth commentary about Open Road authors on the blog. Click here to read "Top of the Bill" by Daniel Green, the first essay in the series. 

“That Ounce of the Ecumenical”

(The MacGuffin, 1991)

When Stanley Elkin exploded onto the ...