Fiction. BOSWELL is Stanley Elkin's first and funniest novel: the comic odyssey of a twentieth-century groupie who collects celebrities as his insurance policy against death. James Boswell — strong man, professional wrestler (his most heroic match is with the Angel of Death) — is a con man, a gate crasher, and a moocher of epic talent. He is also the "hero of one of the most original novel in years" (Oakland Tribune) — a man on the make for all the great men of his time-his logic being that if you can't be a lion, know a pride of them. Can he cheat his way out of mortality? "No serious funny writer in this country can match him" (New York Times Book Review).