![[Image: Old salt]](stone.jpg)
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New, but for Salon-subscribers only: interview
NEW: book review by RS
NEW: RealVideo (G2 only) of RS talking about the Pope: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pope/testimony/ [transcript pending]
NEW: Boston Review profile:
http://bostonreview.mit.edu:80/BR24.6/greenberg.html
1937: 21Aug: Robert Anthony Stone born in Brooklyn, NY
Abandoned by father, mother schizophrenic
Catholic boarding school
1946-54: With mother on Manhattan's West Side
1954: dropped out of high school (from drinking too much
beer and being "militantly atheistic"), joined Navy for four years (as journalist)
1958: New York University (dropped out); copy-boy at NY Daily News; poetry with Beats
1959: Married Janice G. Burr (still going!)
1960: Moved to New Orleans, daughter (Deidre)
jobs: census, Merchant Marine, telephone sales
1961: NYC again, began Hall of Mirrors (under title "Children of Light")
1st tries legal peyote (ineffective)
Fellowship at Wallace Stegner's Stanford writing seminar
Lifelong friendship with Ken Kesey begins [Academic Kesey page]
1st real peyote trip (overdose)
return to NYC
1964: 14Jun-Aug: Merry Pranksters bus trip [Prankster links] stays with RS as it passes thru NYC
1966: Kesey flees to Mexico for 8 months after pot bust, invites RS to join them, Esquire funds trip
1967-71: London, son (Ian)
1967 Faulkner Foundation prize for best first novel
Guggenheim fellowship
1971-1985: Moves to Amherst, Mass, visits at Stanford, University of Hawaii, Harvard, University of California Irvine and San Diego
1971: Vietnam correspondent for six weeks
1971: Writer in residence at Princeton
1986: Jun: Esquire publishes "Blows to the Spirit: A Dialogue Between Ken Kesey and Robert Stone"
1992: booklength bibliography published [Amazon]
1993: two controversial semesters at Johns Hopkins [gossip] [more] (meets Madison Smartt Bell, presumably)
1994: to Yale (in Bay of Souls RS asserts that the CIA dominates Yale)
1994: Robert Solotaroff's book 'Robert Stone' [Amazon]
1997: reviews Updike in NYRB [multipage]
1998: Participates in Hemingway Centennial [short note]
1998: reviews Alfred Kazin in NYRB [multipage]
1998: reviews Philip Roth in NYRB [multipage]
1999? visits Haiti twice or more with Madison Smartt Bell [info]
no-date: moves from Westport to NYC (also Key West) [cite]
2003: resigns Yale [cite]
Above based largely on the stupendous page for the Robert Stone Papers at the NY Public Library, plus this good bio sketch
"I used to write a lot of poetry. I don't write poetry anymore." [cite]
favorite books: Victory, Joseph Conrad; The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway; The Human Comedy, William Saroyan; USA, John Dos Passos; Madame Bovary, Flaubert; Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe; The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens; Jurgen, James Branch Cabell; Narcisse and Golmund, Herman Hesse. [source]
Wm Gibson credits Stone with inspiring 'Neuromancer's style
A great page of Stone links, plus book covers
Encyclopedia Britannica article
Strange 200k slideshow with a soundbite of Stone talking and laughing.
Talented alcoholic becomes dj at rightwing radio station in New Orleans; Harvard liberal/loser takes a job investigating welfare clients
Characters: Rheinhardt, Geraldine Crosby, Morgan Rainey, Calvin Minnow, Lester Clotho, Roosevelt Berry, Matthew J Bingamon, King Walyoe, Farley the Sailor/ Redmond/ Mr Zwingli/ Pastor Heathcliff Jensen, Philomene, Mrs Chester Hyppolite/ Wormwood Puckett, Robert Lee 'Hollywood' Rainey
Made into Paul Newman movie called "WUSA" [IMDb entry]
There's at least one uniquely Stone-ian moment in this one, but I don't recommend starting with it.
Working title: "Skydiver Devoured by Starving Birds"
Characters: Ray Hicks, John Converse, Marge Bender Converse, Dieter Bechstein, Kjell Bechstein, Antheil, Danskin, Smitty, Eddie Peace, Gerald and Jody, Charmian
I think this is his best after Damascus Gate, and recommend it as a starting place.
People call it a Vietnam novel, but only a few chapters take place there-- mostly it's a Southern California heroin-smuggling novel.
What makes it extraordinary is 1) very detailed realism about very very strange subcultures, and 2) deep philosophical overtones, centered on Nietzsche.
The main character is based on Neal Cassady.
A deleted early episode is recycled in "Bear and His Daughter", Marge visiting the aquarium on dilaudid.
Catchphrases: Those Who Are; uninhabited rictus
Of offering more, than what I can deliver,
I have a bad habit it is true
But I have to offer more than what I can deliver,
to be able to deliver what I do.
Makes Harold Bloom's "Western Canon": http://pw1.netcom.com/~qas105/278books.html
Made into Nick Nolte movie called "Who'll Stop the Rain" [IMDb entry] (Stone hated that title)
The movie strips away all the best parts, but what's left is still a highly intelligent thriller, with great casting and settings.
Bleak bleak bleak view of Central American politics, in an imaginary country called Tecan. I'd rate this third after Damascus Gate and Dog Soldiers. Hide the razorblades before you read it.
Characters: Frank Holliwell, Pablo Tabor, Sister Justin Feeney, Father Charlie Egan, Marty Nolan, Oscar Ocampo
Detailed critique
Catchphrase catching on: Mickey Mouse will see you dead
Makes Harold Bloom's "Western Canon": http://pw1.netcom.com/~qas105/278books.html
Ultra-hip insider's view of Hollywood, on location in Mexico filming Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"
"I did a book of the making of the movie of this. Then I discovered they were actually making the movie. I had to write like a son of a bitch because the movie would have been made and it would have been impossible. But I beat the movie out, fortunately." [cite] movie versions in 1982 and 1991? [IMDb]
Characters: Gordon Walker, Lu Anne 'Lee Verger' Bourgeois Morgen, Lionel Morgen, Dongan Lowndes, Joy McIntyre, Walter Drogue (Sr and Jr), Shelley Pearce, the Long Friends
My theory is that this is based on Tuesday Weld, who was in the Dog Soldiers movie. It's about a talented starlet whose glittering surface barely hides her serious schizophrenia, but it ends rather abruptly and unsatisfyingly. I'd still place it ahead of Hall of Mirrors though.
BookCourt charges Children of Light with 'pandering'
Salon shortlists it as a great noir novel: "The most unloved child of all Stone's work (even editor Robert Gottlieb hated it), this novel contains the psychic framework of a good noir while simultaneously being the burnout death of the genre..."
Working title: "Boat"
abandoned epigraph,from Job, paraphrased: "You have done all these bad things that you deserve because you think God can't see you. Clouds are a barrier to him and he seeth not. That's what you think, that God can't see you." [cite]
Characters: Owen Browne, Anne Campbell Browne, Maggie Browne, Ron Strickland, Pamela Koester, Hersey, Harry Thorne, Captain Riggs-Bowen, Matty Hylan
Semi-alternating characters by chapter: O S OA S OA S A O S O S OA OA S OAS S [etc]
This may be an attempt to write a bestseller, about a solo sea adventure. Good, but nothing special, for me.
RS apparently explains his intent in ch36, contemplating a stack of "published memoirs by solitary sailors":
"...the thought struck him of what it might be like to record the reality of things, matched with the thoughts and impressions it brought forth. To find the edge on which the interior met the exterior space. It would not be something of general interest... only of morbid fascination to certain minds. Something for private reflection that might or might not lend itself to very selective sharing."
A very short essay on sailing by Stone for Outside magazine
Reviews: NYT,
Book Court charge: impersonating a Republican
Love scene dissected
Short stories from every phase of Stone's career. Some are brilliant, some are very bleak, several seem autobiographical. One is about Neal Cassady of Kerouac/Kesey fame.
Soon after publishing his first book of stories, in 1997, the novelist Robert Stone likened the short story to "a pitch in baseball. It's one continuous movement that ideally has to, like a pitch, break and then with a kind of retrospective inevitability end up in a catcher's mitt. It's a beautiful form when it works, but it's very difficult."
Short interview, online chat transcript. Review, and another, and a Times review, Time
"When I was doing Damascus Gate I read a lot of the Kaballah, and I found it absolutely wonderful. Talk about metaphorical systems. I thought this made so much sense, and also it was so magical. I got completely intrigued." [cite]
NEW: online annotations project http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/dgate.html
Characters: Chris Lucas, Sonia, Raziel
I've only just read this so I'm not confident yet, but my impression is it's one of the greatest novels ever written.
It deals with probably the most difficult clash of cultures in human history-- Muslims and Jews and Christians (etc!) in Jerusalem-- and Stone seems absolutely objective in sketching dozens of the most important perspectives.
But he brings these to life with perfect authority by following a smart, pessimistic, and very hip half-Jewish journalist as he investigates the 'Jerusalem Syndrome' that infects unstable minds there with passionate religious delusions.
The writing is so dense that it's not a good place to start with Stone, I don't think, but I plan to reread it many times.
Epinions page links many reviews
Stone interview on Jerusalem Syndrome
Short interview about DG, and another. Another
A bunch of reviews from different newspapers, and another, and another, and a Time review, and a Times review, and yet another, and one from the Irish Times, and Jewish SF. Al Jadid, Boston Globe, U of Minnesota; Seattle, Denver, Commonweal, Nat'l Review, Civilization
Disgraceful Salon hatchetjob claims to spot a number of errors
NEW: annotations
"originally much longer" [cite]
characters: Michael Ahearn, 12yo Paul Ahearn, Kristin Ahearn, Phyllis Strom, Olaf the dog, Alvin Mahoney, Norman Cevic, Megan, Marie-Claire 'Lara' Purcell, Marcial 'Triptelemos' Perez, Roger Hyde, Sister Margaret Oliver, Liz McKie, Dirk Van Dreele, Soto, Colonel Eustace 'Boonsie' Junot, Hilda Bofil
1st chapter: full-txt, Houston Earlier version published as short story 'Dominion' in Dec1999 New Yorker [PDF] [HTMLized]
interviews: IdentityTheory (superb), BookForum, CNN
Reviews:
positive: [Jorn], terrrific (Mallon), brave (NYT), polished, brilliant, very good, disquieting
mixed: underdeveloped, unconvincing, less textured, abbreviated, professionalism, little original, [noncomittal]
negative: hollow, too familiar, stereotypes, silly, wreck
disgraceful NYT hatchetjob
"memoir about his younger days in California" [cite] "There are a couple of things I'm going to write about: my childhood, life in the '60s. My childhood was kind of strange." [cite]
"His new project is a novel set in 1930s, "the early 20th century, as the storm of World War II approaches," he described it. His first historical novel aims to "prefigure the future" in the person of a missionary driven out of war-torn China who ends up in Alaska." ["I hope to get back to that." (interrupted by Haiti) cite]
"I've made several trips to Alaska, because I'm considering a novel about the adventures of a missionary family there in the 1930's. And one of these days I'd like to write a purely humorous novel -- a story that doesn't try to be anything, but funny."
1967: ?Unpublished Faye Dunaway profile for Cosmopolitan
March 1992 Harper's, on Havana
Booklength bibliography
Unpublished story titles: "Alas That They Should Fall Apart", "Holiness Moon"
Quotes about writing
Interview after Bear's publication
Protagonists compared
Unhelpful Bookwire author page
One of these back issues of Rain Taxi has something on Stone (I think), but I can't tell which.
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