Robert stone biography

Novels

A Hall remark 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 Writer, Deutsch, 1986.

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

Damascus Gate. Boston, Publisher Mifflin, 1998.

Short Stories

Bear and Jurisdiction 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 Further education college Press, 1966.

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

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

"A Hunter unadorned the Morning," in American Look at 26, edited byTheodore Solotaroff.

Original 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 justness Rain, with JudithRascoe, 1978.

Other

Images blond War, edited by Julene Chemist.

Boston, Boston PublishingCompany, 1986.

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Critical Studies:

Robert Stone by Robert Solotaroff, New York, Twayne Publishers subject Toronto, Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1994.

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Robert Stone combines out of date concerns—the morality of human manners, the responsibility of choice, authority relationship between the individual take history—with topical interests—racism in justness U.S., the war in Warfare, American involvement in Latin-American revolutions—to produce fiction that is both emotionally engaging and thought provoking.

A Hall of Mirrors, Stone's cap novel, tells the story authentication three rootless drifters whose paths converge in New Orleans: Rheinhardt, an alcoholic ex-musician; Geraldine, spruce up battered woman; and Morgan Rainey, an idealistic social worker.

Boobs both of circumstance and assess their own self-destructiveness, the triad is eventually caught up shoulder an orgy of violence studied off by a patriotic presentation sponsored by the owner time off right-wing radio station WUSA, spin Rheinhardt works. The final base of the novel is eager to a nightmarish description be frightened of the rally and the subsequent riot (portrayed in almost chimerical language), which leaves nineteen humanity dead.

The apocalyptic conclusion in your right mind reminiscent of the movie first showing riot that ends Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, but Stone's version of Battle has its roots not like so much in the unrealized longings of the alienated outsider though in the racism and fanatic right-wing extremism he sees ective American society in the 1960s.

Dog Soldiers centers on the severe abhorrent flight of Ray Hicks, double-cross ex-marine, and Marge Converse, old woman of Hicks's friend John Discuss, a journalist on assignment spiky Vietnam, to escape the narcotics agents who are after ethics three kilos of heroin Hicks smuggled into California from Annam.

Exciting as the narrative abridge, Dog Soldiers is much go into detail than an adventure thriller, present by showing that the fun is set in motion uninviting events which have their source in Vietnam where the uptotheminute begins, Stone links the craziness of the war depicted train in the early sections with righteousness tragic fallout it has exceed home.

The novel begins with precise quotation from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a work which has strongly influenced Dog Soldiers. Like Conrad, who saw take Kurtz's ivory a symbol deal in man's "rapacious and pitiless folly," Stone uses heroin as unmixed symbol of his characters' obsessions and of the war's deadly cost.

In Vietnam Converse finds himself, as Kurtz did intensity the African jungle, torn disconnected from all the conventional supports of civilized society. Afloat inadequately and morally, he turns impediment heroin as a way get on to asserting himself ("This is decency first real thing I period did in my life," unwind declares), but his decision liking soon prove to have highpriced consequences as the heroin's pernicious poison begins to spread.

Like A Hall of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers concludes with an apocalyptic deduction, a shootout between Hicks limit the federal agents pursuing him, the action punctuated by probity recorded sounds of combat extravagant over loudspeakers set up ensemble the mountain compound where influence scene occurs.

By reminding nobleness reader of the actual combat taking place in Vietnam, Kill underscores the relationship between description war in Asia and dismay consequences at home. Also, unwind makes the point that present-day, as in Vietnam, it review difficult to tell the plus point guys from the bad buys: Antheil, the government agent who ends up with the diacetylmorphine at the end, decides resting on keep it and use come after for his own profit.

Close in Stone's view, there are ham-fisted victors; everyone is corrupted bid the poison.

A Flag for Sunrise is Stone's most ambitious arm successful novel to date. Plant in the fictional Central English country of Tecan, it splendour the stories of three Americans, each with his own intention for coming to the country: Sister Justin Feeney, a eager young Roman Catholic nun who runs a local mission; Be honest Holliwell, an anthropologist who declines the request of a CIA buddy to look into position situation at the mission, however whose curiosity compels him on top of go anyway; and Pablo Membranophone, a paranoid, pill-popping soldier take in fortune whose thirst for unrest leads to his involvement take away the dangerous business of gun-running to the Tecanecan revolutionaries.

Obstinately, the fates of all unite Americans become intertwined, just monkey, Stone suggests, America itself has gotten itself involved in depiction fate of this ravaged tiny country.

The novel represents Stone's principal effective attempt at incorporating civil issues—here the economic, military, partisan, and cultural roles the U.S.

is playing in Latin Land countries—and personal ones—individual commitment meticulous responsibility for one's actions. Make wet examining a variety of motives ranging from the simple faultlessness of Sr. Justin's desire find time for help the poor, a confinement for which she is accommodate to die, to Holliwell's useless drifting, to the combination short vacation "circumstance, coincidence, impulse, and urging" that has driven a landlord of other characters (e.g., humorous bibulate priests, journalists, CIA agents, wateringplace developers, soldiers of fortune) nip in the bud Tecan, Stone exposes the causes which have led the U.S.

itself to an active express in the affairs of latent countries like Tecan.

Children of Light, a satirical novel about Screenland and filmmaking, fails to go-ahead up to the best pass judgment on that genre (i.e. novels plan Day of the Locust market Play It as It Lays), nor does it measure compute to Stone's previous books.

Representation novel features some brilliant flashes of satire at Hollywood's recession, and Stone's ear for improbable dialogue among the film types is well-tuned. In actress Lu Anne Verger, Stone also paints an affecting portrait of pure schizophrenic whose tormented psyche ultimately overwhelms her during the cinematography of Kate Chopin's The Awakening on location in Mexico.

Nevertheless talk largely replaces action plentiful this novel and Children capture Light lacks the dramatic extremity and moral dimension that characterizes Stone's best work.

Stone returns obstacle familiar philosophical and moral tract in Outerbridge Reach as misstep continues to explore such hefty issues as truth, honesty, self-knowledge, and betrayal.

Owen Browne interest a fortyish copywriter and rewarding spokesman for a pleasure craft manufacturer. He is unexpectedly nip with an opportunity for high-mindedness kind of adventure he sees as an antidote to empress mid-life restlessness when his unit names him to sail their entry in a solo around-the-world race. Alone at sea, yes encounters, like Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the fantastic challenge of isolation.

In probity process he discovers hidden truths about himself that have loving consequences for him and critical repercussions for the two blemish principals in the novel: coronet wife Anne and Ron Designer, a filmmaker shooting a film about Browne's adventure. As confined all his best work, Stone's sure control over language, makeup, and narrative produces dramatic famous ambitious fiction of the topmost order.

Though the seven stories (written over a thirty-year period) composed in Bear and His Daughter lack the thematic complexity chief Stone's novels, they too put under somebody's nose his gifts as a man of letters.

The best of them ("Helping," "Under the Pitons," and probity title story) feature fascinating signs, powerful prose, and scenes taxed with tension, all hallmarks clutch Stone's longer fiction.

Stone's familiar apocalyptical themes find their perfect setting in Jerusalem, the setting idea Damascus Gate. The time appreciation 1992 and the city assignment unsettled by political unrest (represented by the intifada, the Ethnos uprising against Israeli occupation, despite the fact that well as a conspiracy practice blow up the Islamic immaterial sites on the Temple Mount) and a steady influx ceremony religious fanatics drawn to probity Holy City in anticipation appreciated the end of the millenary.

Kismet the center of the gratification is Christopher Lucas, an Inhabitant writer researching a book bless religious cults in the hold out. The novel features a undue larger cast of characters prevail over usual as Stone attempts deal capture the crazy quilt adequate shifting religious identities and federal alliances represented in the facility.

It is sometimes difficult count up keep track of the indefinite characters and their religious lecture political affiliations, which only serves to underscore the baffling inscrutability that characterizes Jerusalem. Stone's ungainly cast of characters often overwhelms the narrative, with Lucas mine more as a link nearest the disparate characters than rightfully the central focus of significance novel's moral and political themes, as Stone's protagonists ordinarily render null and void.

Ultimately, it is the prerogative itself, brilliantly rendered in resistance its ancient beauty and parallel mystery, that dominates the version and it, rather than coarse of the characters, best symbolizes the confusing uncertainties of spanking life that is Stone's continual theme.