| Biggest Elvis: A Novel | |
| Author: | P. F. Kluge |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Publisher: | Penguin |
| Release Date: | 1996 |
| Pages: | 341 |
| Isbn: | 0-14-025811-6 |
Biggest Elvis, also known as Biggest Elvis: A Novel,[1] is a novel[2] written by the American author P. F. Kluge, a former U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in the Pacific region[3] and writer-in-residence at Kenyon College.[4] This 1996 literary piece started out as a journalistic writing for Playboy magazine, to illustrate the nightlife in brothels and nightclubs when fleets of American naval servicemen dock for sailors' shore-leave[2] in the port of Olongapo City.[4] It is also a portrayal of the entrapment of poverty-stricken residents of Olongapo within a "military economy" through the nightly and ritualistic on-stage rebirths, deaths and resurrections of Elvis Presley by three American copycats living and making a livelihood while in the Philippines.[5]
In general, Kluge’s Biggest Elvis is the story of a former college professor and of America itself.[6] The "part mystery" and "part love story" novel[7] is set in Olongapo City, a Philippine town closest to Subic Naval Base, a former U.S. naval installation in the Far East during the 1990s. As a narrative and a commentary[8] regarding American "cultural imperialism"[3] – including "pop-culturalism"[5] – in the Asian region, and the final years of militaristic presence of the United States in Subic Bay, Biggest Elvis protagonizes three American Elvis Presley impersonators and caricatures[3] who perform in a nightclub known as "Graceland",[7] a building that started out as a movie theater.[5]
The triad of reborn Elvises include the fictional persons of Ward Wiggins, Chester Lane and Albert Lane. They were a representation of the changing roles of Americans in the world stage of the time, as "vigorous pioneers"[5] and "lean innovators" turned extravagant and colossal superpowers.[1] [5] Wiggins was the eldest of the trio of impersonators and an unsuccessful English language professor. Chester Lane, known in the narrative as Baby Elvis,[1] was the imitator of the youthful Elvis Presley. His brother, Albert, revived the Elvis epitomized in American cinema, and called "Dude Elvis".[1] The most senior and an obese personification[1] of Elvis, Wiggins, came to be regarded as the "biggest Elvis" – a religious symbolic figure and savior – of the local people and bargirls of Olongapo City,[1] [3] Wiggins was the most serious entertainer among the three because he reached out to the bargirls in order to uproot and lift them up away from their current flesh-driven livelihood, while the Lane Brothers only regard their performances as a momentary engagement.[2] For Wiggins, his show business entanglement was a saintly and spiritual calling. He believed that he was indeed the real Elvis, not just a mimic of America's king of rock and roll music.[5] However, their popularity as performers was overtaken in the end, before Wiggins' final and greatest Elvis Presley entertainment act, by five bargirls, namely Whitney, Elvira, Dolly, Lucy Number Three and Malou.[1]