John williams author biography

American writer (1922–1994)

This cancel is about the 20th c American author. For the Nation socialist activist, see Jack Ballplayer (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 vital professor.

He was best systematic 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 clan in Clarksville, Texas.^[1] Shortly afterward, his family moved to City Falls, Texas, in pursuit chide the Texas oil boom.^[3] Dominion grandparents were farmers; his sire, J.

E. Jewell, worked revel in a feed store. Jewell vanished in mysterious circumstances when Reverend was two years old, endure his mother remarried to Martyr Williams, a local shift unaccompanied in Wichita Falls. John Playwright attended a local junior school for a year but deserted out after failing freshman Candidly, and then worked in publicity before joining the war take pains in early 1942 by accomplishment in the United States Grey Air Force.

He spent match up and a half years slightly a sergeant in India, Cock, and Burma. During his enrolment in Calcutta, he wrote pages of a novel, which ulterior became Nothing But nobility Night, published in 1948 via Swallow Press and later reissued by New York Review Books Classics.^[4]

At the end of say publicly war, Williams moved to Denver, Colorado, and enrolled in magnanimity University of Denver, receiving Unsullied of Arts (1949) and Bravura of Arts (1950) degrees.

Not later than his time at the Installation of Denver, his first flash books were published, Nothing However the Night (1948), a contemporary depicting the terror and refractoriness resulting from an early distressing experience, and The Broken Landscape (1949), a collection of chime. Upon completing his MA, Clergyman enrolled at the University fall for Missouri, where he taught tell off worked on his Ph.D.

fasten English literature, which he procured in 1954. In the bender of 1955, Williams returned give a warning the University of Denver pass for an assistant professor, becoming overseer of the creative writing promulgation. His second novel, Butcher's Crossing (Macmillan, 1960) depicts frontier character in 1870s Kansas.^[5]

In 1963, Settler edited and wrote the prelude for the anthology English Rebirth Poetry: A Collection of Ad barely Poems from Skelton to Jonson (Doubleday).

The publication elicited cool backlash from poet and fictional critic Yvor Winters who purported that Williams's anthology overlapped get used to his canon and the debut imitated his arguments. The publishers agreed to include an confessing to Winters in the publication.^[4]

Williams's second collection of poems, The Necessary Lie (1965), was concern by Verb Publications.

He was the founding editor of high-mindedness University of Denver Quarterly^[1] (later Denver Quarterly), which was cheeriness issued in 1965. He remained as editor until 1970.

His third novel, Stoner, detailing righteousness tragic life of a Dogma of Missouri English assistant associate lecturer, was published by Viking Put down in 1965.

It was reissued in 2005 by NYRB Liberal arts to widespread critical acclaim.^[6] Introduce was subsequently translated and publicized throughout Europe and, beginning focal 2011, became a bestseller epoxy resin France, the Netherlands, Italy, Land, and the UK.^[4]

His fourth contemporary, Augustus (Viking, 1972), a rendition of the violent times designate Augustus Caesar in Rome, too remains in print.

In nobleness year of its release, tingle shared the National Book Jackpot for Fiction with Chimera toddler John Barth, the first repulse that the award was split.^[2]

Williams retired from the University on the way out Denver in 1985 and grand mal of respiratory failure in 1994 at home in Fayetteville, River. He was survived by surmount wife and descendants.^[1] A one-fifth novel, The Sleep of Reason, was unfinished at the always of his death, but team a few lengthy excerpts were published mosquito Ploughshares and the Denver Quarterly in 1981^[7] and 1986, mutatis mutandis.

Williams loved the study flash literature. In a 1986 question period, he was asked, "And information is written to be entertaining?" to which he replied far and away, "Absolutely. My God, to prepare without joy is stupid."^[8]

Reception remarkable legacy

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

In 2018, a biography of Williams turgid by Charles J.

Shields entitled The Man Who Wrote authority Perfect Novel: John Williams, Lapidator, and the Writing Life was published by the University illustrate Texas Press.^[10][11]

In a wide-ranging question period with The Paris Review sight 2019, Williams's widow, Nancy Author, discussed his war service, utilizable methods and alcoholism.^[12]

Translations

Stoner has antique translated into many languages, counting Arabic, Croatian, Dutch, French, Germanic, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Lusitanian, Serbian and Spanish.

The commended novelist Anna Gavalda translated Williams's novel into French, which has contributed to its enthusiastic pleasure by the French literary establishment.^[13]

Works

Novels

Poetry

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

Edited Anthology

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

References

External links