Although Elkin determined, after completing George Mills (1982), to give up writing because he felt that he had put everything he had into that novel, a fortuitous event inspired the book that will prove to be his masterpiece. While in London he saw on the BBC a long report about the departure of an airplane carrying terminally ill children to America for a dream vacation in Disney World. The writer's conflicting emotions were overpowering, and this conflict led him to compose a new novel. On the one hand, he felt overwhelming sorrow and compassion for children doomed to die and forced on public display with the disfigurations from their maladies in plain view. On the other hand, the artist in Elkin was repelled by the exhibitionistic spectacle of dragging these children to an amusement park and rubbing their faces in their mortality. Thus the odd, recent practice...