Mondo Elvis: A Collection of Fiction and Poetry about the King

Ebersole and Peabody's ( Mondo Barbie ) new collection will be published on Elvis's birthday, January 8. ``We'd do the music that Elvis would have done if only the Colonel hadn't put him in all those corny movies,'' Pagan Kennedy's would-be Elvis impersonator says in one of the less credible pieces. Other far-fetched stories make Presley a figure in today's world; Harold Waldrop turns him into a senator who takes jazz clarinetist Dwight Eisenhower as his ideal. More interesting are period pieces in which Elvis is peripheral: Diane Wakoski's poem about a teenager in a home for unwed mothers circa 1956 and an excerpt from Mark Childress's novel in which a white Southern boy chances upon a black radio station. Some of the finest pieces concern contemporary reactions to the dead idol: the woman in Cathryn Hankla's story searches for her dreamboat using each date's adoration for Elvis as a test; Laura Kalpakian contributes a wonderful excerpt from Graced Land (recently turned into a TV movie starring Roseanne Arnold) about a social worker contemplating her upcoming marriage while calling on a welfare mother who lives and dies for Elvis. Selections vary greatly in quality, but the best pieces make reading well worth the effort. (Jan.)