In explaining his approach to Elvin's journey, Lynch commented, "What makes this book funny is Elvin's filtering of events. The dark underbelly is still there, but delivered through somebody the reader feels better about. He's making jokes about what's happening to him, but the events of the book are as grim as in some of my other books." It is Elvin's extraordinary ability to convey the intensity and the absurdity of his situation that makes Slot Machine so captivating and this is the result of the voice that Lynch has devised for him. As Lynch told Jones in the interview conducted in June of 1996, a year after the book was published, "Elvin's voice more closely resembles the way I talk than the other narrators," which means that Elvin has a degree of eloquence way beyond what might seem possible for a thirteen-year-old. Lynch has managed to...