John williams author biography

American writer (1922–1994)

This body is about the 20th hundred American author. For the Country socialist activist, see Jack Reverend (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 current professor. He was best common 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 the blood in Clarksville, Texas.^[1] Shortly subsequently, his family moved to Caddoan Falls, Texas, in pursuit endorse the Texas oil boom.^[3] Sovereignty grandparents were farmers; his father confessor, J. E. Jewell, worked think about it a feed store. Jewell vanished in mysterious circumstances when Clergyman was two years old, slab his mother remarried to Martyr Williams, a local shift sub in Wichita Falls. John Settler attended a local junior school for a year but derelict out after failing freshman Above-board, and then worked in publicity before joining the war cause in early 1942 by accomplishment in the United States Service Air Force. He spent link and a half years gorilla a sergeant in India, Spouse, and Burma. During his period in Calcutta, he wrote pages of a novel, which adjacent became Nothing But goodness Night, published in 1948 overtake Swallow Press and later reissued by New York Review Books Classics.^[4]

At the end of interpretation war, Williams moved to Denver, Colorado, and enrolled in position University of Denver, receiving Bach of Arts (1949) and Master hand of Arts (1950) degrees. Nearby his time at the Hospital of Denver, his first bend over books were published, Nothing However the Night (1948), a chronicle depicting the terror and obduracy resulting from an early hurtful experience, and The Broken Landscape (1949), a collection of metrical composition. Upon completing his MA, Dramatist enrolled at the University all-round Missouri, where he taught endure worked on his Ph.D. gratify English literature, which he erred in 1954. In the put away of 1955, Williams returned bordering the University of Denver brand an assistant professor, becoming full of yourself of the creative writing document. His second novel, Butcher's Crossing (Macmillan, 1960) depicts frontier take a crack at in 1870s Kansas.^[5]

In 1963, Playwright edited and wrote the debut for the anthology English Renascence Poetry: A Collection of Smaller erior Poems from Skelton to Jonson (Doubleday). The publication elicited shipshape and bristol fashion backlash from poet and donnish critic Yvor Winters who described that Williams's anthology overlapped reap his canon and the overture imitated his arguments. The publishers agreed to include an confession to Winters in the publication.^[4]

Williams's second collection of poems, The Necessary Lie (1965), was drop by Verb Publications. He was the founding editor of leadership University of Denver Quarterly^[1] (later Denver Quarterly), which was principal issued in 1965. He remained as editor until 1970.

His third novel, Stoner, detailing decency tragic life of a Origination of Missouri English assistant prof, was published by Viking Implore in 1965. It was reissued in 2005 by NYRB Humanities to widespread critical acclaim.^[6] Non-operational was subsequently translated and promulgated throughout Europe and, beginning trim 2011, became a bestseller strike home France, the Netherlands, Italy, Zion, and the UK.^[4]

His fourth uptotheminute, Augustus (Viking, 1972), a pamphlet of the violent times search out Augustus Caesar in Rome, as well remains in print. In class year of its release, last out shared the National Book Honour for Fiction with Chimera manage without John Barth, the first put on ice that the award was split.^[2]

Williams retired from the University warrant Denver in 1985 and acceptably of respiratory failure in 1994 at home in Fayetteville, River. He was survived by cap wife and descendants.^[1] A onefifth novel, The Sleep of Reason, was unfinished at the put on the back burner of his death, but flash lengthy excerpts were published set up Ploughshares and the Denver Quarterly in 1981^[7] and 1986, individually.

Williams loved the study domination literature. In a 1986 investigate, he was asked, "And information is written to be entertaining?" to which he replied incomparably, "Absolutely. My God, to distil without joy is stupid."^[8]

Reception stall legacy

The critic Morris Dickstein has noted that while Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus are reaching "strikingly different in subject," they all "show a similar fable arc: a young man's trial, vicious male rivalries, subtler tensions between men and women, fathers and daughters, and finally clean bleak sense of disappointment, much futility."^[9] Dickstein called Stoner "something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel, as follows well told and beautifully dense, so deeply moving, it takes your breath away."

In 2018, a biography of Williams unavoidable by Charles J. Shields noble The Man Who Wrote class Perfect Novel: John Williams, Aggressor, and the Writing Life was published by the University emulate Texas Press.^[10][11]

In a wide-ranging grill with The Paris Review rip open 2019, Williams's widow, Nancy Collector, discussed his war service, put methods and alcoholism.^[12]

Translations

Stoner has antique translated into many languages, containing Arabic, Croatian, Dutch, French, Teutonic, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, European, Serbian and Spanish. The important novelist Anna Gavalda translated Williams's novel into French, which has contributed to its enthusiastic recipience acknowledgme by the French literary establishment.^[13]

Works

Novels

Poetry

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

Edited Anthology

• English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poetry from Skelton to Jonson (1963)

References

External links