Richard Elman Quotes

Richard Elman — American Novelist born on April 23, 1934, died on December 31, 1997

Richard M. Elman was a novelist, poet, journalist, and teacher. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Yiddish-speaking and came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century from Russo-Poland. His boyhood is captured in his comic novel Fredi & Shirl & The Kids: An Autobiography In Fables... (wikipedia)

I jabbered too much in class about all the Russian writers whom I admired for being, among other things, uncouth and somewhat humorously melodramatic, such as Gogol and Dostoyevsky, just as it was in my own household when I was growing up.

My own father used to boast to me of biting off a man's ear in a street fight.

Now, past middle age, with so many books written I still care about and only a few still in print, I know the feeling of being overlooked.

I can recall photographs of Comrade Ulbricht being embraced by Comrade Brezhnev, which must have been like putting your arms around Grant's Tomb.

If I wanted to be Rimbaud, what was I doing in graduate school? Trying to stay out of the army, of course. Graduate study gave me a draft deferment. But I also knew I lacked erudition and polish and was often sunk in forlorn reveries.

Richard Elman Quotes

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