SOURCE: "The Roaring Anger of Not Being in Charge," in The New York Times Book Review, March 21, 1993, pp. 3, 19.

[Wolitzer is an American novelist, critic, and author of children's literature. In the following review of Van Gogh's Room at Arles, she praises Elkin's prose style, humor, and compassionate understanding of his characters.]

The cover of Stanley Elkin's 1985 novel read Stanley Elkin's The Magic Kingdom, which brings to mind titles like Stephen King's "It" and Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough. What was Mr. Elkin's book doing in that particular pantheon? His work had never achieved blockbuster status, or been turned into a mini-series or movie. Mr. Elkin is a star of a very different literary universe, where well-constructed and difficult books are revered, and where a dream double bill at the local multiplex would be "Donald Barthelme's Snow White" and "Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies." There was nothing big and...