John Hawkes (writer)

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John Clendennin Burne Hawkes, Jr. (born August 17, 1925 in Stamford, Connecticut ; died May 15, 1998 in Providence, Rhode Island ) was an American writer. He is considered one of the outstanding representatives of American postmodernism .

life and work

Hawkes grew up in Connecticut, Alaska, and New York. In 1943 he began studying at Harvard University , but dropped out after a short time and volunteered for the American Field Service , for which he was in Italy and Germany as a medic at the front from 1944-45. After the war he returned to America and married Sophie Goode Tazewell in 1947; the marriage resulted in four children. In the same year he resumed his studies at Harvard. Here his professor Albert J. Guerard became aware of him, who decisively promoted his literary work over the next decades. Hawkes 'first novel The Cannibal , which is set in a nightmarish Germany in the immediate post-war period, was published in 1949 by the newly founded publisher New Directions , which soon advanced to become one of the leading publishers of the American avant-garde over the next few years with, among other things, Hawkes' novels . After graduating from university in 1949, Hawkes first worked for Harvard University Press , and in 1955 he began teaching at the Department of English Literature. In 1958 he moved from Harvard to Brown University , where he taught literature and creative writing until his death .

Hawkes' work is characterized by radical form and language experiments and mostly thematizes the abysses of human action, violence and sexual perversions; many of his novels are set in landscapes that seem surreal, apocalyptic, such as his first work The Cannibal . His novels are therefore considered to be difficult to access, not suitable for the masses, and never achieved high print runs. All the greater is the appreciation that many of the most important American post-war writers showed him, and he is therefore considered a writer's writer . His admirers include Saul Bellow , Thomas Pynchon , William Gaddis , William Gass and Edmund White . The literary criticism, at least, received his early works very favorably; Leslie Fiedler's foreword to The Lime Twig (1961) was instrumental in making Hawke's work acceptable, and in 1964, Susan Sontag named him the "best half-dozen" American writers of his time in her review of Second Skin in the New York Times . Outside the USA, his works were particularly well received in France, with the Prix du Meilleur livre étranger (1973) and the Prix Médicis étranger (1986), two of the most prestigious literary prizes open to non-French authors.

Works

  • The Cannibal (novel, 1949), German The cannibal. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-518-38451-1 .
  • The Beetle Leg (novel, 1951)
  • The Goose on the Grave (novel, 1954)
  • The Lime Twig (novel, 1961)
  • Second Skin (novel, 1964)
  • The Innocent Party (Dramas, 1967)
  • Lunar Landscapes: Stories & Short Novels 1949-1963 (Short Stories, 1969)
  • The Blood Oranges (novel, 1971)
  • Death, Sleep, & the Traveler (Novel, 1974)
  • Travesty (novel, 1976)
    • German reward for driving fast at night. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-518-39026-0 .
  • The Passion Artist (Roman, 1979)
  • Virginie, Her Two Lives (Novel, 1983)
  • Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade (autobiographical novel, 1985)
    • German adventure with the fur traders in Alaska. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1990, ISBN 3-518-38295-0 .
  • Innocence in Extremis (novel, 1985)
  • Whistlejacket (novel, 1988)
  • Sweet William: A Memoir of Old Horse (Roman, 1993)
  • The Frog (novel, 1997)
  • An Irish Eye (novel, 1997)

Prizes and awards

Secondary literature

  • Frederick Busch : John Hawkes: A Guide to His Fictions . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse NY 1973. ISBN 0-8156-0089-5
  • Rita Ferrari: Innocence, Power, and the Novels of John Hawkes . University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1996. ISBN 0-8122-3341-7
  • Roy Flannagan: John Hawkes . In: Review of Contemporary Fiction 20: 2, 2000. pp. 47-80.
  • Donald J. Greiner: Comic Terror: The Novels of John Hawkes . Memphis State University Press, Memphis TN 1973. ISBN 0-87870-017-X
  • Donald J. Greiner: Understanding John Hawkes . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia SC 1985. ISBN 0-87249-262-1
  • Carol A. Hryciw-Wing: John Hawkes: A Research Guide . Garland Pub., New York 1986. ISBN 0-8240-8560-4
  • Lesley Marx: Crystals Out of Chaos: John Hawkes and the Shapes of Apocalypse . Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison NJ 1997. ISBN 0-8386-3661-6
  • Patrick O'Donnell: John Hawkes . Twayne, Boston 1982. ISBN 0-8057-7351-7 (= Twayne's United States Authors Series / TUSAS 418)
  • Stanley Trachtenberg (Ed.): Critical Essays on John Hawkes . GK Hall, Boston 1991. ISBN 0-8161-7304-4
  • Michaele Whelan: Navigating the Minefield: Hawkes' Narratives of Perversion . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main and New York 1998. ISBN 0-8204-3657-7 (= American University Studies 69)
  • Heide Ziegler : Irony is a must: John Barth and John Hawkes. Forms of consciousness of the American contemporary novel . University Press C. Winter, Heidelberg 1995. ISBN 3-8253-0248-2 (= Britannica et Americana, 3rd episode, vol. 15)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hawkes, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hawkes, John Clendennin Burne Jr. (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 17, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Stamford, Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1998
Place of death Providence, Rhode Island