Joseph McElroy

Joseph Prince McElroy (born August 21, 1930) is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He is noted for his long postmodern novels such as Women and Men.

Personal background McElroy was born on August 21, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Brooklyn Heights. He graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School in 1947 and was given an Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award in 2007 from the school's Board of Governors. He graduated from Williams College in 1951. The following year, McElroy earned a master's degree from Columbia University. He served in the Coast Guard from 1952 to 1954, and then returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D. in 1961.

In 1961, McElroy married Joan Leftwich, of London, in London. She is the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews; her father, Joseph Leftwich, was a translator and anthologizer of Yiddish poetry. They have a daughter.

McElroy's writing is often grouped with that of William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon, due to the encyclopedic quality of his novels, especially Women and Men (1987). His short fiction was first published in literary journals. Echoes of McElroy's work can be found in that of Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. McElroy's work often reflects a preoccupation with how science functions in American society; Exponential, a collection of essays published in Italy in 2003, collects science and technology journalism written primarily in the 1970s and 1980s for the New York Review of Books.

In 1980, McElroy and his class at Queens College interviewed Norman Mailer. He interviewed Harry Mathews in 2002 for the Village Voice. McElroy wrote about his fiction and influences in his essay "Neural Neighborhoods".

Honors and awards John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Fiction, 1976 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, 1977 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship, twice National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, twice

Published works

Novels A Smuggler's Bible, Harcourt Brace, 368 pages, 1966. Hind's Kidnap: A Pastoral on Familiar Airs, Harper and Row, 534 pages, 1969. Ancient History: A Paraphase , Knopf, 307 pages, 1971. Lookout Cartridge, Knopf, 531 pages, 1974. Plus, Knopf, 215 pages, 1977 . Women and Men, Knopf, 1192 pages, 1987 . The Letter Left to Me, Knopf, 151 pages, 1988. Actress in the House, Overlook, 432 pages, 2003. Cannonball, Dzanc Books, 312 pages, 2013.

Short stories The Accident, New American Review, Number 2, January 1968. Ship Rock: A Place, William B. Ewert, Concord, New Hampshire, limited edition, 42 pages, 1980 republished as a chapter in Women and Men, 1987 Preparations for Search 1984 revised and printed as a chapbook, by Small Anchor Press, 2010 Night Soul and Other Stories, Dalkey Archive Press, 304 pages, 2011. Taken From Him, Kindle Singles, 2014.

Essays Exponential (2003; published in Italy) "Neural Neighborhoods and Other Concrete Abstracts" (1974)