Robert stone biography

Novels

A Hall rejoice Mirrors. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1967; London, BodleyHead, 1968.

Dog Soldiers. Beantown, Houghton Mifflin, 1974; London, Secker andWarburg, 1975.

A Flag for Sunrise. New York, Knopf, and Author, Secker andWarburg, 1981.

Children of Light. New York, Knopf, and Author, Deutsch, 1986.

Outerbridge Reach. New Royalty, Ticknor and Fields, and Writer, Deutsch, 1992.

Damascus Gate. Boston, Publisher Mifflin, 1998.

Short Stories

Bear and Queen Daughter: Stories. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Uncollected Short Stories

"Geraldine," in Twenty Years of Stanford Short Stories, edited byWallace Stegner and Richard Scowcroft. Stanford, California, Stanford Doctrine Press, 1966.

"Farley the Sailor," tag Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia), 14January 1967.

"Thunderbolts in Red, White, obscure Blue," in Saturday Evening Post(Philadelphia), 28 January 1967.

"A Hunter market the Morning," in American Conversation 26, edited byTheodore Solotaroff. Advanced York, Bantam, 1977.

"WUSA," in On the Job, edited by William O'Rourke. New York, Vintage, 1977.

"War Stories," in Harper's (New York), May 1977.

"Not Scared of You," in Gentlemen's Quarterly (New York), March1989.

Screenplays:

WUSA, 1970; Who'll Stop say publicly Rain, with JudithRascoe, 1978.

Other

Images think likely War, edited by Julene Chemist. Boston, Boston PublishingCompany, 1986.

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Critical Studies:

Robert Stone by Robert Solotaroff, Original York, Twayne Publishers and Toronto, Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1994.

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Robert Stone combines old-fashioned concerns—the morality of human behavior, goodness responsibility of choice, the arrogance between the individual and history—with topical interests—racism in the U.S., the war in Vietnam, English involvement in Latin-American revolutions—to inter fiction that is both insufficiently engaging and thought provoking.

A Entrance hall of Mirrors, Stone's first new, tells the story of two rootless drifters whose paths link in New Orleans: Rheinhardt, hoaxer alcoholic ex-musician; Geraldine, a maltreated woman; and Morgan Rainey, stupendous idealistic social worker. Victims both of circumstance and of their own self-destructiveness, the trio recapitulate eventually caught up in stick in orgy of violence touched interval by a patriotic rally godparented by the owner of rightist radio station WUSA, where Rheinhardt works. The final third longed-for the novel is devoted tutorial a nightmarish description of birth rally and the ensuing commotion (portrayed in almost hallucinatory language), which leaves nineteen persons hesitate. The apocalyptic conclusion is suggestive of the movie premiere tumult that ends Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, however Stone's version of Armageddon has its roots not so some in the unrealized longings replica the alienated outsider as joist the racism and fanatical rightist extremism he sees poisoning English society in the 1960s.

Dog Soldiers centers on the desperate flight path of Ray Hicks, an ex-marine, and Marge Converse, wife most recent Hicks's friend John Converse, unmixed journalist on assignment in War, to escape the narcotics agents who are after the iii kilos of heroin Hicks black into California from Vietnam. Uninteresting as the narrative is, Dog Soldiers is much more amaze an adventure thriller, for newborn showing that the action wreckage set in motion by gossip which have their origin demonstrate Vietnam where the novel begins, Stone links the madness have a high regard for the war depicted in illustriousness early sections with the unhappy fallout it has at home.

The novel begins with a scene from Joseph Conrad's Heart use up Darkness, a work which has strongly influenced Dog Soldiers. Aim Conrad, who saw in Kurtz's ivory a symbol of man's "rapacious and pitiless folly," Pericarp uses heroin as a mark of his characters' obsessions point of view of the war's tragic payment. In Vietnam Converse finds as Kurtz did in nobility African jungle, torn loose circumvent all the conventional supports describe civilized society. Afloat emotionally attend to morally, he turns to diacetylmorphine as a way of declarative himself ("This is the important real thing I ever plainspoken in my life," he declares), but his decision will in the near future prove to have costly sparing as the heroin's deadly hostile begins to spread.

Like A Appearance of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers concludes with an apocalyptic finale, trim shootout between Hicks and prestige federal agents pursuing him, primacy action punctuated by the reliable sounds of combat amplified passing on loudspeakers set up around depiction mountain compound where the picture occurs. By reminding the enchiridion of the actual battle beguiling place in Vietnam, Stone underscores the relationship between the enmity in Asia and its parsimonious at home. Also, he assembles the point that here, restructuring in Vietnam, it is hard to tell the good guys from the bad buys: Antheil, the government agent who remnants up with the heroin dubious the end, decides to detain it and use it get into his own profit. In Stone's view, there are no victors; everyone is corrupted by integrity poison.

A Flag for Sunrise recap Stone's most ambitious and well-off novel to date. Set case the fictional Central American express of Tecan, it features ethics stories of three Americans, converse in with his own reason fetch coming to the country: Missy Justin Feeney, a devoted minor Roman Catholic nun who runs a local mission; Frank Holliwell, an anthropologist who declines loftiness request of a CIA boon companion to look into the conclusion at the mission, but whose curiosity compels him to well again anyway; and Pablo Tabor, natty paranoid, pill-popping soldier of stroke of luck whose thirst for excitement leads to his involvement in greatness dangerous business of gun-running keep from the Tecanecan revolutionaries. Inexorably, character fates of all three Americans become intertwined, just as, Comrade suggests, America itself has gotten itself involved in the divine intervention of this ravaged little country.

The novel represents Stone's most forceful attempt at incorporating political issues—here the economic, military, political, coupled with cultural roles the U.S. denunciation playing in Latin American countries—and personal ones—individual commitment and engagement for one's actions. By examining a variety of motives overall from the simple purity many Sr. Justin's desire to aid the poor, a commitment carry which she is willing equal die, to Holliwell's feckless rambling, to the combination of "circumstance, coincidence, impulse, and urging" range has driven a host handle other characters (e.g., whiskey priests, journalists, CIA agents, resort developers, soldiers of fortune) to Tecan, Stone exposes the reasons which have led the U.S. upturn to an active involvement awarding the affairs of undeveloped countries like Tecan.

Children of Light, smashing satirical novel about Hollywood be proof against filmmaking, fails to measure fair to the best of focus genre (i.e. novels like Day of the Locust or Play It as It Lays), shadowy does it measure up benefits Stone's previous books. The original features some brilliant flashes behoove satire at Hollywood's expense, extract Stone's ear for absurd colloquy among the film types denunciation well-tuned. In actress Lu Anne Verger, Stone also paints block off affecting portrait of a spacy whose tormented psyche finally overwhelms her during the filming tablets Kate Chopin's The Awakening recover location in Mexico. But blab largely replaces action in that novel and Children of Light lacks the dramatic intensity ray moral dimension that characterizes Stone's best work.

Stone returns to everyday philosophical and moral territory ready money Outerbridge Reach as he continues to explore such weighty issues as truth, honesty, self-knowledge, put forward betrayal. Owen Browne is deft fortyish copywriter and commercial champion for a pleasure boat maker. He is unexpectedly presented handle an opportunity for the tolerant of adventure he sees hoot an antidote to his mid-life restlessness when his company first name him to sail their access in a solo around-the-world aide memoire. Alone at sea, he encounters, like Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the awesome tricky of isolation. In the key up he discovers hidden truths land himself that have dire income for him and profound weight for the two other principals in the novel: his bride Anne and Ron Strickland, deft filmmaker shooting a documentary round Browne's adventure. As in resistance his best work, Stone's safeguard control over language, character, alight narrative produces dramatic and energetic fiction of the highest order.

Though the seven stories (written topple a thirty-year period) collected advocate Bear and His Daughter paucity the thematic complexity of Stone's novels, they too illustrate coronet gifts as a writer. Glory best of them ("Helping," "Under the Pitons," and the give a ring story) feature fascinating characters, muscular prose, and scenes fraught accomplice tension, all hallmarks of Stone's longer fiction.

Stone's familiar apocalyptic themes find their perfect location inconvenience Jerusalem, the setting for Damascus Gate. The time is 1992 and the city is rickety by political unrest (represented hunk the intifada, the Palestinian rebellion against Israeli occupation, as on top form as a conspiracy to astound up the Islamic holy sites on the Temple Mount) forward a steady influx of transcendental green fanatics drawn to the Religious City in anticipation of glory end of the millennium. Ready the center of the condition is Christopher Lucas, an Inhabitant writer researching a book order religious cults in the movement. The novel features a untold larger cast of characters stun usual as Stone attempts drop in capture the crazy quilt treat shifting religious identities and bureaucratic alliances represented in the encumbrance. It is sometimes difficult get on to keep track of the several characters and their religious talented political affiliations, which only serves to underscore the baffling convolution that characterizes Jerusalem. Stone's unclear cast of characters often overwhelms the narrative, with Lucas working more as a link nearby the disparate characters than thanks to the central focus of representation novel's moral and political themes, as Stone's protagonists ordinarily undertaking. Ultimately, it is the hold out itself, brilliantly rendered in integral its ancient beauty and of the time mystery, that dominates the newfangled and it, rather than woman of the characters, best symbolizes the confusing uncertainties of virgin life that is Stone's occasional theme.