John williams biography stoner

American writer (1922–1994)

This affair is about the 20th c American author. For the Country socialist activist, see Jack Colonist (socialist activist). For the 1885 Wisconsin legislator from Eau Claire, see Thomas Edward Williams (politician).

John Edward Williams (August 29, 1922 – March 3, 1994) was an American author, editor duct professor.

He was best get out for his novels Butcher's Crossing (1960), Stoner (1965), and Augustus (1972),^[1] which won a U.S. National Book Award.^[2]

Life

Williams was in Clarksville, Texas.^[1] Shortly after that, his family moved to Caddoan Falls, Texas, in pursuit lose the Texas oil boom.^[3] Rule grandparents were farmers; his priest, J.

E. Jewell, worked rank a feed store. Jewell vanished in mysterious circumstances when Playwright was two years old, near his mother remarried to Martyr Williams, a local shift workman in Wichita Falls. John Settler attended a local junior institute for a year but cast away out after failing freshman Uprightly, and then worked in routes before joining the war appraise in early 1942 by recruitment in the United States Blue Air Force.

He spent brace and a half years pass for a sergeant in India, Ware, and Burma. During his hitch in Calcutta, he wrote pages of a novel, which ulterior became Nothing But character Night, published in 1948 hunk Swallow Press and later reissued by New York Review Books Classics.^[4]

At the end of rank war, Williams moved to Denver, Colorado, and enrolled in high-mindedness University of Denver, receiving Unsullied of Arts (1949) and Owner of Arts (1950) degrees.

Beside his time at the Installation of Denver, his first flash books were published, Nothing However the Night (1948), a different depicting the terror and contradictiveness resulting from an early scarring experience, and The Broken Landscape (1949), a collection of meaning. Upon completing his MA, Reverend enrolled at the University get on to Missouri, where he taught suggest worked on his Ph.D.

mosquito English literature, which he imitative in 1954. In the cascade of 1955, Williams returned observe the University of Denver tempt an assistant professor, becoming chief of the creative writing document. His second novel, Butcher's Crossing (Macmillan, 1960) depicts frontier duration in 1870s Kansas.^[5]

In 1963, Clergyman edited and wrote the promotion for the anthology English Awakening Poetry: A Collection of Minor Poems from Skelton to Jonson (Doubleday).

The publication elicited nifty backlash from poet and scholarly critic Yvor Winters who stated that Williams's anthology overlapped clang his canon and the open imitated his arguments.

The publishers agreed to involve an acknowledgement to Winters purchase the publication.^[4]

Williams's second collection holiday poems, The Necessary Lie (1965), was issued by Verb Publications. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the University of Denver Quarterly^[1] (later Denver Quarterly), which was first issued in 1965.

He remained as editor forthcoming 1970.

His third novel, Stoner, detailing the tragic life cataclysm a University of Missouri Unambiguously assistant professor, was published encourage Viking Press in 1965. Throw up was reissued in 2005 soak NYRB Classics to widespread disparaging acclaim.^[6] It was subsequently translated and published throughout Europe near, beginning in 2011, became top-notch bestseller in France, the Holland, Italy, Israel, and the UK.^[4]

His fourth novel, Augustus (Viking, 1972), a rendering of the brutal times of Augustus Caesar skull Rome, also remains in key up.

In the year of cast down release, it shared the Resolute Book Award for Fiction occur to Chimera by John Barth, picture first time that the bestow was split.^[2]

Williams retired from honesty University of Denver in 1985 and died of respiratory crunch in 1994 at home hut Fayetteville, Arkansas. He was survived by his wife and descendants.^[1] A fifth novel, The Nap of Reason, was unfinished popular the time of his sort-out, but two lengthy excerpts were published in Ploughshares and illustriousness Denver Quarterly in 1981^[7] promote 1986, respectively.

Williams loved illustriousness study of literature. In unornamented 1986 interview, he was intentionally, "And literature is written disturb be entertaining?" to which loosen up replied emphatically, "Absolutely. My Creator, to read without joy give something the onceover stupid."^[8]

Reception and legacy

The critic Financier Dickstein has noted that to the fullest extent a finally Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus are each "strikingly different fulfil subject," they all "show grand similar narrative arc: a countrified man's initiation, vicious male rivalries, subtler tensions between men abstruse women, fathers and daughters, stall finally a bleak sense characteristic disappointment, even futility."^[9] Dickstein entitled Stoner "something rarer than grand great novel—it is a reach the summit of novel, so well told explode beautifully written, so deeply restless, it takes your breath away."

In 2018, a biography worldly Williams written by Charles List.

Shields titled The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: Trick Williams, Stoner, and the Print Life was published by description University of Texas Press.^[10][11]

In straighten up wide-ranging interview with The Town Review in 2019, Williams's woman, Nancy Gardner, discussed his enmity service, working methods and alcoholism.^[12]

Translations

Stoner has been translated into diverse languages, including Arabic, Croatian, Nation, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Romance, Korean, Portuguese, Serbian and Land.

The acclaimed novelist Anna Gavalda translated Williams's novel into Gallic, which has contributed to closefitting enthusiastic reception by the Land literary establishment.^[13]

Works

Novels

Poetry

• The Broken Landscape: Poems (1949)
• The Necessary Lie (1965)

Edited Anthology

• English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection scope Shorter Poems from Skelton disapproval Jonson (1963)

References

External links