Stanley Elkin; Author, Teacher

Prize-winning novelist Stanley Elkin, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and wrote comically of tragic themes such as helplessness and disease, has died, hospital officials said Thursday. He was 65.

Elkin died Wednesday of a heart attack.

Found to have multiple sclerosis 20 years ago, the New York-born writer continued to write novels and taught English from a wheelchair at Washington University in St. Louis.

Elkin won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1982 for his novel “George Mills,” and was a finalist three times for the National Book Award, most recently in 1993 for “The Macguffin.”

A Times review described that book as “roses” by a “cantankerous and gifted writer.”

In other Times reviews, critics termed Elkin’s work “an impressive achievement” and noted that he was a talented wordsmith who wrote “sentence by bejeweled sentence.”

“Elkin’s trademark is to tightrope his way from comedy to tragedy with hardly a slip,” Ralph B. Sipper noted in reviewing “George Mills” in 1982. “His allegorical hero is the 1,000-year-old man, not only Mel Brooks, but Sisyphus in overalls. . . . More than occasionally you will find passages poetic.”

Elkin’s 17th book, “Mrs. Ted Bliss,” will be published in December.

Novelist William Gass, a friend and colleague, said of Elkin: “He was extremely funny without being a comic writer,” and cited his exceptional gift with language.

Elkin’s father, a costume jewelry salesman, moved the family to Chicago’s South Side from New York when Elkin was 3. Elkin earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Illinois and served in the Army.

Elkin had taught at Washington University since 1960. In 1967, he was a visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara.