Austin Wright (writer)

Austin Wright

Austin McGiffert Wright (born September 6, 1922 in Yonkers , New York , † April 23, 2003 in Cincinnati , Ohio ) was an American author . From 1970 to 1993 he was Professor of English Literature at the University of Cincinnati .

Wright only became known to a larger audience posthumously through the reprint of his novel Tony and Susan , which was filmed in 2016 by Tom Ford as Nocturnal Animals .

Life

Austin Wright was born in 1922 as one of three children of the geographer John Kirtland Wright and his wife Katharine McGiffert Wright and grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson . It was named after his father's brother, the legal scholar and writer Austin Tappan Wright . Wright's paternal grandparents, John Henry Wright and Mary Tappan Wright , were also active as authors.

Wright studied geology at Harvard University until 1943 . After graduating, he served in the United States Army as an air traffic controller in China and played the piano in the Army Jazz Band. After his military service, he studied English at the University of Chicago , where he received his master's degree and, in 1959, his Ph.D. acquired.

Since the early 1960s Wright was at the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati ; since 1970 he has held a professorship for English literature there . In 1993 he retired .

Wright was married to Sara Hull Wright for 52 years until his death; the marriage produced three daughters. His second daughter Johanna died of cancer in 2000, which Wright hit hard. Wright himself suffered from cancer in the last years of his life; shortly before his death he showed signs of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease . He died on April 23, 2003 at the age of 80.

plant

Wright dealt repeatedly with the principles of storytelling and the interplay of fantasy and reality in his work .

Wright published his first novel Camden's Eyes in 1969. First Persons followed in 1973; The Morley Mythology in 1977. His works were received favorably by the critics; In 1985 he was honored with the Whiting Award for One of the Top 10 Most Promising Writers of the Year. Nevertheless, none of his novels achieved significant sales figures during his lifetime.

The novel Tony and Susan , published by Baskerville Publishers in 1993 , was not a sales success, despite very good reviews. The Universal Studios optioned the rights for a possible film adaptation, but this did not materialize. In 2010 the novel was reprinted by the British publisher Atlantic Books and thus reached a larger audience for the first time. Tom Ford then acquired the film rights again from Baskerville Publishers for an undisclosed sum (from which Wright's Estate received $ 270,000) and wrote a script based on the original. He directed the 2016 film Nocturnal Animals, based on Wright's novel, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams in the lead roles. After the film was released, the novel was reissued under the title Nocturnal Animals .

Atlantic Books also reissued the novels After Gregory , Telling Time and Disciples in 2017 .

He worked on his last book, the autobiographical novel A Writer's Story , which Wright considered his best work, until shortly before his death. His family discovered parts of the manuscript in his estate; the entire work could not be found.

Fonts

Novels

• Camden's Eyes. Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1969, 336 pages.
• First Persons: A Novel. Harper & Row. 1973, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-014759-4 .
• The Morley Mythology. Harper & Row. 1977, 308 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-014751-8 .
• Recalcitrance, Faulkner, and the Professors: A Critical Fiction. University of Iowa Press, 1990, 242 pages, ISBN 978-0-87745-301-7 .
• Tony and Susan. Baskerville Publishers, Fort Worth 1993, 334 pages, ISBN 978-1-880909-01-0 .
  • 1st new edition: Tony and Susan. Atlantic Books, 2010, 384 pages, ISBN 978-1-84887-021-5 .
  • 2nd edition: Nocturnal Animals. Harper Perennial, 2016, 384 pages, ISBN 978-1-44345-387-5 .
  • 1. German translation: Tony and Susan. Translated from the English by Jobst-Christian Rojahn. Goldmann, Munich 1996, 408 pages, ISBN 978-3-442-72078-1 .
  • 2. German translation: Tony & Susan. Translated from the English by Sabine Roth. Luchterhand, Munich 2012, 416 pages, ISBN 978-3-442-74704-7 .
• After Gregory: A Novel. Baskerville Publishers, Fort Worth 1994, 292 pages, ISBN 978-1-880909-12-6 .
• Telling Time: A Novel. Baskerville Publishers, Fort Worth 1995, 264 pages, ISBN 978-1-880909-36-2 .
• Disciples. Baskerville Publishers, Fort Worth 1997, 300 pages, ISBN 978-1-880909-55-3 .

Non-fiction

• The American Short Story in the Twenties . University of Chicago Press, 1961, 425 pages.
• The Art of the Short Story: An Introductory Anthology. (with John Leeds Barroll) Allyn and Bacon, 1969, 479 pages.
• Formal Principle in the Novel. Cornell University Press, 1982, 317 pages, ISBN 978-0-8014-1462-6 .

Awards

• 1967: Mrs. AB "Dolly" Cohen Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University of Cincinnati
• 1974: George Rieveschl Jr. Award from the University of Cincinnati
• 1985: Whiting Award

Web links

• Literature by and about Austin Wright in the catalog of the German National Library
• Austin Wright in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• His daughter Katharine Wright's blog

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Jim DeBrosse: Will Tom Ford's Film Induce Austin Wright's Literary Rebirth? . In: cincinnatimagazine.com of January 8, 2017.
2. ^ ^{A b} John Bach: Stunning acclaim for former UC novelist . In: magazine.uc.edu, accessed on May 22, 2020.
3. ^ ^{A b} Austin Wright . In: whiting.org, accessed May 22, 2020.
4. ↑ Rachel Deahl: After 20 Years, Out-of-Print Literary Darling Gets Second Chance . In: publishersweekly.com of July 27, 2011.
5. ^ William Skidelsky: Tony and Susan by Austin Wright . In: theguardian.com of May 2, 2010.
6. ^ Austin Wright . In: atlantic-books.co.uk, accessed May 22, 2020.
7. ^ Cohen and Barbour award winners listed . In: magazine.uc.edu, accessed on May 22, 2020.