Among American-Jewish writers, Stanley Elkin has a very special place. Like other writers of his American-born generation, he deals with a heritage rather than the personal experience of immigration or of the Holocaust. While some young writers continue to sound traditional themes or to chant nostalgic hymns to a diminished sense of peoplehood, others have sought a new mode in black humor, a movement shared with non-Jewish authors. Elkin's career as a writer exemplifies a new style of ethnic concern and a new concern for non-ethnic style.

Only about half of Elkin's heroes are Jewish. They are invariably secular Jews with little commitment either to Judaism or to peoplehood. Indeed, locution (Jewish humor) and the usual vocation of his protagonists (salesmanship) are the only vestiges justifying ethnic categorization. In the course of Elkin's career, Jewishness has become increasingly vestigial.

One might, from the biographical facts, have expected stronger...