Career
McElroy taught English at the University of New Hampshire (1956-1962) and retired from teaching in 1995, after 31 years in the English department at Queens College, City University of New York.
McElroy's writing is often grouped with that of William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon, due to the encyclopedic quality of his novels, particularly the 1,192 pages of 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 commented on his own fiction and his influences in his "Neural Neighborhoods" essay.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Mc Elroy
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