Franchiser (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

 
Ben Flesh is one of the men “who made America look like America, who made America famous.” He collects franchises, traveling from state to state, acquiring the brand-name establishments that shape the American landscape. But both the nation and Ben are running out of energy. As blackouts roll through the West, Ben struggles with the onset of multiple sclerosis, and the growing realization that his lifetime quest to buy a name for himself has ultimately failed.
Review
The Franchise

A frenzied parable, rather as though the Wandering Jew and Willy Loman had gotten together on a vaudeville act.

Crowded with cunning shifts of meaning and extravagant deployments of wit.

Elkin takes an almost tactile pleasure in language, piling up words and phrases, reaching for every available joke and pun, until his sentences threaten to topple of their very weight.

In his principal character, Elkin represents the tragic panorama of an ailing America reaching out for stabilizers that aren't there; and the void beckons.

The prevailing dialect of The Franchiser is Ben's own free-wheeling and exuberant Jewish-American a tribal dialect in which Elkin can achieve effects worthy of S. J. Perelman and Wallace Markfield.

The Franchiser has what few novels have any more: the ability to astonish and delight and a totally conscious hero who proves that the unaudited life is not worth living.

The Franchiser is a fine portrait of America today with insights that are humorous, significant, and poignantly real.
About the Author
Stanley Elkin (1930-1995) was an award-winning author of novels, short stories, and essays. Born in the Bronx, Elkin received his BA and PhD from the University of Illinois and in 1960 became a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis where he taught until his death. His critically acclaimed works include the National Book Critics Circle Award-winners "George Mills" (1982) and "Mrs. Ted Bliss" (1995), as well as the National Book Award finalists "The Dick Gibson Show" (1972), "Searches and Seizures "(1974), and "The MacGuffin" (1991). His book of novellas, "Van Gogh's Room at Arles," was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award.

William Gaddis (1922-98) stands among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. The winner of two National Book Awards (for "J R" [1976] and "A Frolic of His Own" [1995]), he wrote five novels during his lifetime, including "Carpenter's Gothic "(1985), "Agap? Agape" (published posthumously in 2002), and his early masterpiece "The Recognitions" (1955). He is loved and admired for his stylistic innovations, his unforgettable characters, his pervasive humor, and the breadth of his intellect and vision.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Past the organge roof and the turquoise tower, past the immense sunburst of the green and yellow sign, past the golden arches, beyond the low buff building, beside the discrete hut, the dark top hat on the studio window shade, beneath the red and white longitudes of the enormous bucket, coming up to the thick shaft of the yellow arrow, piercing the royal-blue field, he feels he is home. Is it Nashville? Elmira, New York? St. Louis County? A Florida key? The Illinois arrowhead? Indiana as a holster? Ohio like a badge? Is he North? St. Paul, Minn.? Northeast? Boston, Mass.? The other side of America? Salt Lake? Los Angeles? At the botton of the country? The Texas udder? Where? In Colorado's frame? Wyoming like a postage stamp? Michigan like a mitten? The chipped, eroding bays of the Northwest? Seattle? Bellingham, Washington?