“If the question is can I take it, the answer is no. Regularity is what I know best. I have contributed to the world’s gloom, I acknowledge that. But I have always picked on victims. Victims are used to it. Irregularity is what they know best. They don’t even feel it. I feel it. It gives me the creeps.”

I picked up Stanley Elkin’s A Bad Man by mistake, thinking I was getting a book by some other author. But, having bought it, I gave it a chance. It wasn’t exactly my kind of book, and Elkin isn’t my kind of author, but I can’t deny the book was unexpectedly entertaining.

Think of Kafka’s “The Trial.” Think of Catch-22. Think (a little) of the Book of Job. That’s what A Bad Man is like, sort of.

Leo Feldman is a self-made man. He built his peddler father’s pushcart business up into a large department store – chiefly through black market dealing during World War II. He did not serve himself, due to a congenital health problem – the fetus of a vestigial twin, lodged in his chest next to his heart. If it ever moves, it could kill him.

In the basement of his store, he ran an off-the-books business – not retail, but trading favors, providing referrals to illegal services – abortions, or drugs, or prostitutes. So he was not greatly surprised when the police came for him one day.

He ends up in a penitentiary without a real-world analogue – a modern, high-security complex located in a large tract of no-man’s land. He discovers that the prisoners’ lives are governed by strict rules laid down by the god-like Warden – strict but fluid rules, constantly changing, sometimes mutually contradictory. Whenever Feldman thinks he’s found a way to get by, the Warden stymies him, and once again he finds himself alone, an outcast among outlaws.

What makes the book fascinating is its dark comedy. None of the major characters is really sympathetic. Feldman is, as the Warden terms him, “a bad man.” He has lived a life of greed and petty cruelties. The Warden is god-like, but he’s a petty god – loveless and cruel in his own way. Thus all Feldman’s misfortunes and sufferings are deserved, and often poetic. But the system itself is just as cruel.

Stanley Elkins’ style does a lot to make A Bad Man a fun read. He delights in puns and plays on words – “Little children suffered him.” When the Warden speaks of a small grove of trees he has provided for the inmates’ recreation, he says, “This is your copse, you robbers…!”

What is this book about? It may be a cosmic complaint about the world – the Warden may, indeed, be meant to represent God. It may be a satire on America, from a Jewish perspective. It may be a liberal satire on capitalism.

Whatever it is, I found A Bad Man surprisingly entertaining, far more than I would have expected if I’d known what I was buying. Recommended, for literate grownups.