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The MacGuffin

Stanley Elkin author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Dalkey Archive Press

Published:25th Sep '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The MacGuffin cover

Bobbo Druff, a coca leaf-chewing street commissioner "on the cusp of just-past-it, " transforms his mid-life crisis into a paranoid web of mysterious events in a plot reminiscent of Hitchcock.

As he's chauffeured about in his official limousine, aging City Commissioner of Streets Bobbo Druff comes to a frightening realization: he's lost force, the world has started to condescend to him. His once fear-inspiring figure has become everyone's "little old lady." In retaliation, Druff constructs a paranoid plot--his "MacGuffin"--within which (he believes) everyone is out to get him. With unabashed enthusiasm Druff starts an illicit affair (in order to incriminate himself), instigates fights with his employees, invents lies for his family--in short, does everything in his power to create a world in which he is placed safely and firmly at the scandalous center. One of Elkin's greatest comic figures, Druff's self-conscious madness is surprisingly smart and hilariously inventive. Few characters in modern literatureshow such immense creativity and courage in the face of such a hopeless dilemma--the very slipperiness of existence itself.

  • Short-listed for National Book Awards (Fiction) 1991

ISBN: 9781564782236

Dimensions: 231mm x 155mm x 21mm

Weight: 454g

283 pages