The MacGuffin by Stanley Elkin

First published: 1991

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: The 1990’s

Locale: An unnamed major American city in the Midwest

Principal Characters:

• Bobbo Druff, a fifty-eight-year-old neurotic who serves as commissioner of streets in a large city in the Midwest
• The MacGuffin, Druff’s second self—the devil within
• Rose Helen Druff, his sixty-year-old wife
• Michael Druff, their thirty-year-old son
• Margaret Glorio, a buyer of fashionable men’s clothing who becomes Druff’s mistress
• Dick, and
• Doug, Druff’s chauffeurs
• Su’ad al Najaf, an illegal Lebanese immigrant who is ostensibly a rug buyer

The Novel

Set in a large unnamed American city in the Midwest that seems much like St. Louis, The MacGuffin is the story of some two days in the life of Bobbo Druff, commissioner of streets. The novel successfully functions on many levels; it exhibits a multifaceted complexity in that it is the story of a family, a love intrigue of the husband with mistress, a murder mystery, a tale of smuggling, and a political statement. While being all of these, it is mostly about Bobbo Druff and “The MacGuffin,” his psychological other and controlling self.

The MacGuffin has no chapter or sectional divisions; Elkin unfolds the narrative entirely by relating the thoughts and actions of Bobbo Druff during a Friday and Saturday of some unspecified weekend in the early 1990’s. Even so, the novel is structured around some six to eight episodic adventures, determined primarily by Druff’s physical location. Great portions of the novel are internal monologues, many of which are between Druff and The MacGuffin; other internal monologues occur as well, and there are also interchanges in dialogue with other characters.

When the novel opens, readers learn almost immediately of the recent mysterious death of Su’ad al-Najaf, a young college student and an illegal immigrant from Lebanon who sold rugs and dated Druff’s son, Michael. Su’ad had died some forty hours before the beginning of the present action, having been repeatedly run over by an automobile. Druff somehow understands that he is connected with the death, but he does not know how. It is not clear if Druff is merely neurotic and paranoid or correct in his suspicions. The reader has many reasons to believe Druff is not mentally balanced: He continues to get high on coca leaves throughout the novel, and his mind wanders hopelessly, revealing him to be unacceptably solipsistic and at least a borderline psychotic. Too, the highs from the coca leaves are mixed with the effects of numerous prescription medicines.

In the second main episode of the novel, Druff meets Margaret Glorio, a buyer of men’s clothing for department stores who claims to be forty-four years old but later acknowledges that she is “fifty, more or less.” Witty, worldly, and experienced, the two soon agree to a liaison that night. Druff, who is fifty-eight years old and has never been unfaithful in his thirty-six-year marriage to Rose Helen, quickly and guiltlessly goes to Margaret’s apartment, where the whole affair is enacted humorously. Both characters banter in what becomes a satire on sex and adultery.

Druff returns home to wife and son early the next morning and sleeps until noon. Meanwhile, Elkin provides the only significant flashback of the story as he relates the courtship and marriage of Bobbo and Rose Helen, describing in great detail their college years in the 1950’s. Again, the author satirizes courtship and sexual relations, but this time his target is youth. The narrative is replete with rather stock situations (jokes about fraternities and sororities, escapes from housemothers who would catch them in the act, intrigues at hotels and in rented rooms, and the like), but there is a fresh perspective. Somehow, these events have meaning, as they help to explain Druff’s present character and to make credible his MacGuffin.

On Saturday morning at home, Druff awakens mistakenly thinking it is another workday, and he dresses and heads off to work. Soon after discovering his mistake, he meets up with Hamilton Edgar and three other Jews who invite him into a synagogue. They have a conversation that feeds Druff’s paranoia and the realization that he is somehow connected with Su’ad’s accidental death. From a political context as well as a racial one, Jews are satirized as being like all other Americans: selfish, materialistic, and given to vice. They enjoy their breakfast of ham and eggs; and in the study of the synagogue—so Druff and the reader will eventually learn—are Arab rugs (presumably, Islamic prayer rugs) smuggled into the country and knowingly purchased by these men at the synagogue. The reader should quickly realize that Elkin is not particularly attacking Jews here; rather, he is attacking Jews as mainstream Americans who have the same vices as others, especially Druff himself, whose graft and political corruption have been self-acknowledged from the beginning.

Later in the afternoon, Druff has a series of conversations with acquaintances he happens to meet, all of whom reveal information or somehow indicate that Druff himself is involved with Su’ad’s death. He begins to feel that he is to be the victim of some conspiracy and that this will be the day of his own death.

Druff returns late that afternoon to Margaret Glorio’s apartment, where all the furniture and surroundings have been changed overnight. They have another sexual encounter, again enacted with humor paired with hopelessness. Significant to the plot, Glorio’s apartment, so Druff now sees, has several Oriental rugs lying about. Druff learns that his newly acquired mistress had been friends with Su’ad and knows his own son Michael.

Death itself does not escape satire either. Druff leaves Glorio’s apartment to go to the wake of Marvin Macklin, a city official who has just died. Druff is not quite sure who Macklin is, but he shows up anyway to give condolences to the widow and family. To his surprise, other persons who have been feeding his paranoia throughout the day are also present, including Dick and Doug (his two chauffeurs), the three Jews from the synagogue, and the mayor of the city. American death rites are satirized with both bitterness and comedy as Elkin describes the activities of the wake.

The novel’s last episode occurs when Druff returns home to wife and son and unravels the events of the day so as to determine the truth about Su’ad’s death. With funds from the Jewish bankers whom Druff had met at the synagogue, Su’ad had been smuggling rugs to make money to finance terrorist operations for Arabs in the Middle East. Druff’s own son had been her driver when she delivered the smuggled rugs. The Jewish bankers had had her killed when she was unable to pay off loans to them. Druff’s son had been driving Su’ad in Druff’s car, and he had let her out onto the street moments before she was intentionally run over. Moreover, stolen goods are even yet in Druff’s car trunk. Having learned all of this, Druff simply goes to bed to sleep.

The Characters

Bobbo Druff, the narrator and main character of the story, is truly the only subject of this complex novel that has so many other threads and aspects. He represents the modern American, and his life embodies, for Elkin at least, life in America in the 1990’s. He is materialistic and corrupt; he is neurotic, psychotic, and schizophrenic (and, importantly, justly so); he is intellectual, witty, and smart; he is hopelessly middle-class; he finds relief in life by incessantly getting high on coca leaves and taking at least four different prescription medicines; he is both humor and pathos—a strangely correct mixture.

The MacGuffin is never seriously defined in the novel, yet Druff himself describes him several times in different ways. The MacGuffin is the alter ego, the devil within, the id and the ego, the conscience gone over to the other side. He is a kind of generally harmless “Sam” telling “Son of Sam” what to do. Recognizably, though, The MacGuffin is not localized to Druff’s character but is present in everyone. The MacGuffin and Druff have conversations, but The MacGuffin never directly tells Druff what to do.

Rose Helen Druff is Bobbo’s wife of thirty-six years. Her most significant role in the novel is during the flashback to her courtship and affair with Druff when they were college students in the 1950’s. Thus we see two Rose Helens: the gifted young college student, extremely intelligent but slightly deformed by a childhood disease, and the housewife she has become some forty years later whose main concern is to get batteries for her hearing aid. Elkin’s point is to create a character suitable to provoke guilt in Druff himself, given his new mistress. This does not occur. Druff covers up his actions and lies about them, but there is no feeling of guilt or remorse.

Michael Druff satirizes procreation. Thirty years old and still living at home, he is consistently described as a hopeless adolescent, one who will never grow up no matter what and will be perpetually dependent upon his parents even after their deaths. Michael is the next generation of “Druffism”: That is, he is Druff himself, who cannot make his way in the world because he lacks maturity and intelligence. Thus, Michael knowingly becomes the driver for a woman smuggling stolen goods, apparently oblivious to possible consequences.

Margaret Glorio’s character permits Elkin to satirize yet another commonplace of American life: the liberated career woman who has made her way into the “man’s world” by becoming “masculinized.” She is Druff’s equal in every way, perhaps more so. She is smarter than he and quicker with her tongue. Moreover, she is more successful in her profession and more secure in her personhood, identity, and activities. Nevertheless, she is given to all the vices of modern Americans; the fact that she controls and manipulates the system does not excuse the immorality of her behavior.

Dick and Doug, Druff’s two chauffeurs, initially serve as Druff’s confidants. As the story unfolds, however, it is clear that they are part of the political intrigue and satire. They are associates of those who know and suspect that somehow Druff is connected to Su’ad’s murder—and they sell him out.

Su’ad al-Najaf, although a smuggler serving the Arab cause and terrorism in the Middle East, is yet another character who embodies the hopeless nature of politics in the 1990’s. On the one hand, she publicly claims to favor the “final solution”; on the other, she does business with her enemies without reserve. Her existence, profession, and death reveal the complexities and hopeless entanglements of contemporary political problems, as well as of life itself.

Critical Context

The MacGuffin succeeds in making significant and correct statements about modern politics. The global situation is so involved that even such traditional enemies as the Arabs and Jews cannot disentangle themselves from the complexity of the various problems. They depend upon one another to have someone to hate, to have an enemy; just as certainly and more important, however, they depend upon one another to fund and sustain their own problems and hatreds.

Local politics, as exemplified by Druff, the mayor, other commissioners, and even the two chauffeurs, parallels the mess and havoc of larger problems. No one can be trusted in a world where friends serve the causes of enemies and, conversely, enemies serve the causes of friends—all knowingly, but never openly.

It is internal politics with which Elkin is doubtless most concerned. This is represented in Druff’s family life with both his wife and son, and with his relationship with himself and The MacGuffin. The context of family politics finally makes it impossible for Druff to make sense out of the entanglements around him, even when he has full knowledge of all the facts. In The MacGuffin, Elkin’s goal is to make a statement not merely about problems in the Middle East (he is actually little concerned about relations between Jews and Arabs) but rather about problems in self-definition facing all readers.

Bibliography

Edwards, Thomas R. “The MacGuffin.” The New Republic 204 (May 20, 1991): 44-47. One of the best reviews available. Edwards finds Elkin’s main character Druff to be a “cultural dinosaur” who is nevertheless successful as a comedian. The critic sees in the novel Elkin’s attempt to define what it is to be an American in the 1990’s.

Elkin, Stanley. “A Conversation with Stanley Elkin.” Interview by David C. Dougherty. Literary Review 34 (Winter, 1991): 175-195. Elkin discusses the influence of Saul Bellow on his writing, the various inspirations for many of the characters in his novels, and his attitude toward certain critical responses to his work. He reveals his enthusiasm for The MacGuffin, which at the time of the interview was a work in progress.

Emerson, Ken. “The Indecorous, Rabelaisian, Convoluted Righteousness of Stanley Elkin.” The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 1991, 40-43. Emerson playfully takes Elkin to task for the humor, irony, satire, and distancing between self and audience in Elkin’s work. The critic appreciates these qualities of the writer while questioning the validity of some of Elkin’s themes.

Koenig, Rhoda. “The MacGuffin.” New York 24 (February 25, 1991): 113-114. This review, though brief, is particularly critical and revealing of the novel’s main character. Koenig also draws attention to instances of the humor in the novel.

Moore, Lorrie. “The MacGuffin.” The New York Times Book Review, March 10, 1991, 5. This early review of the novel draws attention to its main qualities. Lauds the work for its ability to provide humor about the contemporary American scene.

O’Donnel, Patrick. “Of Red Herrings and Loose Ends: Reading Politics’ in Elkin’s The MacGuffin.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 15 (Summer, 1995): 92-100. O’Donnel discusses Elkin’s framing of The MacGuffin as a narrative hybrid and shows how Elkin employs the detective novel schema in the plot. He also explores the significance of the comparisons Elkins makes between everyday life and global politics.