Stanley Elkin is a "writer's writer," a designation at once happy and sad. Sad because his older titles are not to be found at the nearest paperback store but, with luck, in the used book stalls. His is the sort of name publishing houses like to trot out when accused of Harold Robbins or Robin Moore.

Elkin does close-order dialogue as snappy as Heller or Roth, and his eye for contemporary detail is as sharp as Barthelme's. So what's amiss? Let him tell you. Like many modern writers, he's forever talking about what he's up to through the guise of his narrator…. (p. 33)

["The Bailbondsman"] is one of the great works in the language—right up there, perhaps, with [Faulkner's] "The Bear" and [Melville's] "Bartleby." But you must grant Elkin his premises. He has no interest in "the arduous, numbing connections" in plot or even structure. He's not...