Like most novelists, Elkin began publishing short stories first. His second book, Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, was one of his most successful, but would be his only short story collection. The format was too constraining for Elkin’s expansive style, and with a few exceptions he was done with it completely after Criers. However, he regularly published slightly edited, stand-alone excerpts from his novels in major magazines, and compiled a “Greatest Hits” collection which included such excerpts alongside a short story and two novellas. Elkin discovered a fondness for the novella, which gave him more verbal space than a short story but more focus than a novel. He published three novella collections over his career, each keeping their respective three tales distinct but tied together thematically, if not also, in the case of The Living End, narratively.