John Williams (Author)
John Edward Williams (born August 29, 1922 in Clarksville , Texas , † March 3, 1994 in Fayetteville , Arkansas ) was an American author and editor. He was a professor at the University of Denver , where he taught English from 1955 to 1985.
Life
Williams grew up in northeast Texas. His grandparents were poor smallholders, he did not know his biological father, his stepfather was an employee in a post office. He attended the local junior college for a year and then worked for newspapers and as a speaker on radio programs. In 1942 he volunteered for the United States Army Air Forces and spent two and a half years in China, India and Burma. He was used as a radio operator on a C45 and survived a kill. He then suffered nightmares and had attacks of malaria . He wrote his first book during the war in Burma.
After the end of the war he went to Denver , where he took up a study of English literature on an Army scholarship, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949 and graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 1950 . His first two books were published during his studies, the 1948 novel Nothing But the Night , which deals with a traumatic experience of its protagonist , and a year later the volume of poetry The Broken Landscape .
He then moved to the University of Missouri , where he received a teaching position. In 1954 he received his doctorate there in English literature. In 1955 Williams returned to his old university, which hired him as an assistant professor. There he gave courses in creative writing and taught English literature until his retirement . In 1960 his second novel, Butcher's Crossing, was published . The novel belongs to the genre of the classic western and describes the life of outlaws and adventurers who follow the herds of buffalo on their way west, among whom they cause a bloody slaughter, which in winter almost starve, almost die of fever, and who at find a different world on their return to Butcher's Crossing. In 1963 he published the anthology English Renaissance Poetry , for which he also wrote the introduction. In 1965 his second volume of poetry, The Necessary Lie, was published .
His third novel, Stoner , is about the life and career of a Professor of English Literature at the University of Missouri and was published in 1965. His last novel, Augustus, is a historical novel about the Emperor Augustus and his time. The book won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1973 along with the novel Chimera by John Barth ; the first time that this award has been given to two authors at the same time. A fifth novel remained unfinished.
He was the founder of the prestigious literary magazine Denver Quarterly , which he published from 1965 to 1970.
Williams was married four times: the first time when he was nineteen, and shortly after the war he married a second time. During his first few years at university, he had a third marriage that lasted until the late 1950s and resulted in three children. He was married to his fourth wife, Nancy Gardner, for 35 years until his death.
Williams retired in 1985. He died in 1994 at his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
estate
John Williams' literary and scholarly estate has been in the archives of the University of Arkansas Library since 1987. It includes u. a. his correspondence, notes, lecture notes and lecture material, photographs, sketches and unfinished manuscripts for novels and manuscripts of his poems.
Works
Novels
- 1948 Nothing But the Night . New edition: Fayetteville, London: University of Arkansas Press 1990.
- Nothing but the night . With an afterword by Simon Strauss . German by Bernhard Robben . Munich: dtv 2017. ISBN 978-3-423-28129-4
- 1960 Butcher's Crossing . New edition 2007.
- Butcher's Crossing . German by Bernhard Robben. Munich: dtv 2015. ISBN 978-3-423-28049-5
- 1965 Stoner . New edition: Introduction by John McGahern . New York: NYRB Classics 2006.
- Stoner. Novel . German by Bernhard Robben. Munich: dtv 2013. ISBN 978-3-423-28015-0
- 1972 Augustus . New edition 2003.
- Augustus. Novel . German by Bernhard Robben. Munich: dtv 2016. ISBN 978-3-423-28089-1
Poetry
- 1949 The Broken Landscape. Poems . New edition 1975. Excerpt: Three poems from The Broken Landscape : A Benediction Of The Air , Ode to the Only Girl , Swing Song , [1] (PDF; 47 kB)
- 1965 The Necessary Lie
literature
- Patricia Reimann: Jungle of the Soul . Conversation with Nancy Gardner Williams, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 10, 2016, p. 20
- Charles J. Shields : The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life . University of Texas Press, Austin 2018, ISBN 978-1477317365
- Charles J. Shields: the man who wrote the perfect novel. 'Stoner' and the life of John Williams . dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-423-28191-1
Web links
- Literature by and about John Williams in the catalog of the German National Library
- John Edward Williams Papers , short biography and inventory of the estate at the University of Arkansas
- Wolfgang Saxon: John Williams, 71, a Novelist, Editor and Professor of English , obituary in New York Times , March 5, 2004
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alexander Cammann: John Williams - In the Clash of the Elements , about the book Butcher's Crossing, article on zeit online, published on March 3, 2015
- ^ Denver University, publications
- ^ Alan Prendergast: Sixteen years after his death, not-so-famous novelist John Williams is finding his audience , in: Denver Westword News, November 4, 2010
- ↑ Univ. of Arkansas Library, John Edward Williams Papers, Directory .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Williams, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Williams, John Edward (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American writer and editor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 29, 1922 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Clarksville , Texas |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 3, 1994 |
| Place of death | Fayetteville , Arkansas |