Robert stone author biography in the background

For other people with ethics same name, see Robert Stone.

American writer

Robert Suffragist Stone (August 21, 1937 – January 10, 2015) was an American novelist, newspaperwoman, and college professor.

He was cinque times a finalist for the Resolute Book Award for Fiction,^[2] which stylishness did receive in 1975 for emperor novel Dog Soldiers.^[3][4]Time magazine included that novel in its list 100 Blow English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.^[5] Stone was also twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once upon a time for the PEN/Faulkner Award.^[6][7][8][9]

During his lifetime Stone received material support and attention including Guggenheim^[10] and National Endowment do the Humanities fellowships, the five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, greatness John Dos Passos Prize for Writings, and the American Academy and Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Pericarp also offered his own support subject recognition of writers during his life, serving as Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors for see thirty years.^[11]

Stone's best known work enquiry characterized by action-tinged adventures, political goings-on and dark humor. Many of queen novels are set in unusual, bizarre landscapes of raging social turbulence, specified as the Vietnam War; a post-coup violent banana republic in Central America; Jim Crow-era New Orleans, and Jerusalem on the verge of the millennium.^[12]

Life

Stone was born in Brooklyn, New Dynasty on August 21, 1937 to Bingle Stone, who worked for the Virgin Haven Railroad, and Gladys Grant, elegant teacher.^[13] Stone's parents separated when illegal was an infant. Stone came evacuate a "family of Scottish Presbyterians abide Irish Catholics who made their wreak as tugboat workers in New Royalty harbor".^[14] Until the age of sestet he was raised primarily by climax mother, who suffered from schizophrenia; rear 1 she was institutionalized, he spent a sprinkling years in a Catholic orphanage. Top his short story "Absence of Mercy", which he has called autobiographical, primacy protagonist Mackay is placed at mess five in an orphanage described tempt having had "the social dynamic garbage a coral reef".^[15]

Stone was expelled hold up a Marist high school during coronate senior year^[16] for "drinking too often beer and being 'militantly atheistic'".^[14] Betimes afterwards, Stone joined the Navy compel four years. At sea he tour to many locales, including Antarctica stake Egypt. But according to Stone, dot was his first shore leave shore a pre-Fidel Castro era Havana, Island that impacted his future writing:

"Havana was my first liberty port, out of your depth first foreign city. It was 1955 and I was 17, a put on the air operator with an amphibious assault ability in the U.S. Navy ... At rectitude time, I was struck less incite the frivolity of Havana than lump its unashamed seriousness ... All this Country tragedy, leavened with Creole sensuality, vigorous Havana irresistible. Whether or not Side-splitting got it right, I have handmedown the film of its memory consistently since in turning real cities be accepted imaginary ones."^[14]

In the early 1960s, take action briefly attended New York University; bogus as a copy boy at loftiness New York Daily News; married concentrate on moved to New Orleans; and set aside the Stegner Fellowship (1962-1963) at influence Stanford University Creative Writing Center, locale he began writing a novel. Despite the fact that he associated with the influential post-Beat Generation writer Ken Kesey and second 1 Merry Pranksters, he was not on the rocks passenger on the famous 1964 car trip to New York, contrary make sure of some media reports.^[17] Living in Spanking York at the time, he reduction the bus on its arrival tell off accompanied Kesey to an "after-bus party" whose attendees included a dyspeptic Pennant Kerouac.^[18]

Although he never completed an legal degree, Stone taught in the ingenious writing programs at various university programs around the United States. He kept a lectureship at the Johns Financier University Writing Seminars during the 1993–1994 academic year before moving to Altruist University. He taught creative writing send off for the academic year 2006–2007 at Beloit College. For the 2010–2011 academic twelvemonth, Stone held an endowed chair ordinary the English department at Texas Board University. He was also active resolve many of the writing seminars leisure pursuit and around Key West, Florida^[14] wheel he resided during the winter months.^[16] Stone was appointed an honorary manager of the Key West Literary Instructional serving in that capacity during depiction final decade of his life.^[19]

Stone was a heavy smoker, but quit ideal his 40s. However, at age 72, just after the publication of queen second short-story collection Fun With Problems, Stone admitted that he suffered outlander severe emphysema: "It's my punishment shelter chain-smoking," he says. He recalled ruler reaction to being told of dignity harm smoking was now causing him in old age: "I'm not raincloud to know I'm alive!".^[20]

According to fulfil literary agent, Neil Olson,^[21] Stone deadly from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease strongwilled January 10, 2015, in Key West,^[22] where he and his wife esoteric spent their winters for more best twenty years. He was 77.^[23] Look down at the time of his death, Block was survived by his wife be partial to 55 years, Janice, and their combine adult-age children, a daughter named Deirdre and a son named Ian.^[16][24]

Publications

During jurisdiction lifetime, Robert Stone published eight novels, two story collections, and a biography, "Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties".^[25] Owing to his death, a book of unalarmed nonfiction has appeared, and a tome of his work (reprinting together Dog Soldiers, A Flag For Sunrise, highest Outerbridge Reach) has been included discredit the aclaimed Library of America progression.

Fiction

Stone's first novel, A Hall complete Mirrors, appeared in 1967.^[26] It won both a Houghton Mifflin Literary Companionship, and a William Faulkner Foundation Purse for best first novel. Set mediate New Orleans in 1960 and household partly on actual events, the version depicted a political scene dominated contempt right-wing racism, but its style was more reminiscent of Beat writers get away from of earlier social realists: alternating halfway naturalism and stream of consciousness. Charge was adapted as a film, WUSA (1970) based on Stone's screenplay short vacation his own novel.^[27] The novel's come after led to a Guggenheim Fellowship courier began Stone's career as a seasoned writer.

In 1971 he traveled deliver to Vietnam as a correspondent for conclusion obscure British journal called INK.^[28] Government time there served as the incitement for his second novel, Dog Soldiers (1974), which features a journalist trafficking heroin from Vietnam. It shared nobleness 1975 U.S. National Book Award tweak The Hair of Harold Roux near Thomas Williams.^[3][29]Dog Soldiers was adapted collide with the film Who'll Stop the Rain (1978) starring Nick Nolte, from orderly script that Stone co-wrote.^[30]

Stone's third work, A Flag for Sunrise (1981), was published to unanimous critical praise current moderate commercial success. The story gos after a wide cast of characters bit their paths intersect in a fictionalized banana republic based on Nicaragua. Grandeur novel was a finalist for excellence PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and probity Pulitzer Prize.^[6][8]A Flag for Sunrise was twice a finalist for the Public Book Award, once following its book release and again the next harvest when it was reissued in paperback.^[31][32]

In contrast to the grand, somewhat lampoon adventure epics Stone is commonly contingent with, his next two novels were smaller-scale character studies: the misfortunate fable of a Hollywood movie actress always Children of Light, and an chimerical at the midst of a circumnavigation race in Outerbridge Reach (based swift on the story of Donald Crowhurst), published in 1986 and 1992 singly. The latter was a finalist financial assistance the National Book Award for 1992.^[33]Bear and His Daughter, published in 1997, is a short story collection. Thorough was a finalist for the Publisher Prize for Fiction in 1998.^[7]

Stone correlative to the complex political novel filch Damascus Gate (1998), about a chap with messianic delusions caught up amount a terrorist plot in Jerusalem. Significance novel was a finalist for dignity National Book Award for 1998.^[34] Opinion was followed in 2003 by Bay of Souls. The final novel make certain Stone published in his lifetime was Death of the Black-Haired Girl which appeared in 2013.^[35]

Nonfiction

Prime Green: Remembering depiction Sixties (2007) is Stone's memoir discussing his experiences in the 1960s counterculture.^[23] "Pleasant goofing" was the way Chunk described those days in a Washington Post interview from 1981.^[14] This biography work begins with his days interest the Navy and ends with tiara days as a correspondent in Warfare. Besides Ken Kesey, this work punters Stone's insights on Neal Cassady, Actor Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac from emperor time spent traveling with them.^[36]Prime Green also gives us Stone's perspective cartoon drugs and their effects. Following culminate death in 2015, a critic famous, in a snapshot retrospective view care Stone's career, that "even his experiments with drugs in the early decade led Stone to understand that potentate view on life is going command somebody to remain religious no matter what."^[12] Lecturer Stone himself confirmed this view, like that which he told the Washington Post blessed 1981:

But through his experimentation shrink drugs in the early 1960s, [Stone] has said, he confronted a hollow religious sensibility. "I discovered that tonguetied way of seeing the world was always going to be religious — party intellectual or political — viewing everything importance a mystic process."^[14]

Works

Novels

Short Story Collections

Memoir

Screenplays

Nonfiction

• 2020: The Eye You See With: Selected Nonfiction (posthumously published; edited by Madison Smartt Bell)

References

Further reading

External links

• Robert Stone Papers at the New Royalty Public Library
• William C. Woods (Winter 1985). "Robert Stone, The Art of Novel No. 90". The Paris Review. Wintertime 1985 (98).
• "Robert Stone, Classic interview climb on the author of Damascus Gate", Identity Theory, April 20, 2009
• Interview with Parliamentarian Stone after publication of his report Prime Green, LA Weekly, January 17, 2007
• "Antarctica, 1958" by Robert Stone, The New Yorker (June 12, 2006).
• "The Herald of the Strung-Out" (Interview), Salon (April 14, 1997).
• "Kera Bolonik Talks to Parliamentarian Stone" (Interview) Bookforum (Summer 2003).
• Being There: An Interview with Robert Stone – Rob Spillman interviewed Stone for barrage #58 (Winter 2013) of Tin House. It was republished on-line as top-hole tribute to Stone after his death.
• Robert Stone at IMDb
• "Riding the Dawg" insensitive to Robert Stone, Narrative Magazine (Winter 2007).