Robert Olen Butler

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Robert Olen Butler (2009)

Robert Olen Butler, Jr. (born January 20, 1945 in Granite City , Illinois ) is an American university professor and writer who received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain , among other awards .

Life

Studies, Vietnam War and private life

After attending Granity City High School , he studied at Northwestern University , where he received a Bachelor of Science (BS) in 1967 . He then completed postgraduate studies at the University of Iowa in 1969 with a Master of Arts (MA). In 1969 he began his military service in the US Army . Although he could have been deferred because of his studies, he took up his service during the Vietnam War and volunteered for the US Army Intelligence in Vietnam . There he learned the Vietnamese language and how to empathize with the life situation of the local population. Most recently he was promoted to sergeant .

After his return to the US he worked as a teacher working in a school before it between 1975 and 1985 the publisher was from magazines of the publisher Fairchild Publications. He was also a fellow at the New School for Social Research between 1979 and 1981 .

Butler was married four times, including from 1972 to 1987 with the poet Marilyn Krepf Geller and most recently from 1995 to 2007 with the playwright Elizabeth Dewberry.

Literary work

In 1981 he took up his writing and published his novel The Alleys of Eden (1981) his debut novel . In the following years several other novels appeared such as Sun Dogs (1982), Countrymen of Bones (1983), On Distant Ground (1985), Wabash (1987) and The Deuce (1989). Since his first literary works received good literary reviews, but were difficult to sell, he was a teacher at McNeese State University in Lake Charles from 1985 to 1993 . At the end of the 1980s, the first awards for his books followed, such as the Chien Kien Award from the Vietnam Veterans of America (1987) and the Emily Clark Balch Prize from the literary magazine Virginia Quarterly Review (1990).

He finally had his literary breakthrough with A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain , a 1992 collection of short stories about his experiences in Vietnam, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 . In addition, he received the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Award as well as a Guggenheim grant and in 1994 a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for the book.

In 1993 he accepted an appointment to the Francis W. Eppes - professor of creative writing at Florida State University and taught there ever since. On this subject he also published a textbook entitled From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction (2005).

In the following years he published other novels such as They Whisper (1994), The Deep Green Sea (1997), Mr Spaceman (2000), Fair Warning (2002) and most recently Hell (2009). Several other collections of short stories were also published, such as Tabloid Dreams (1996), Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards (2004), Severance (2006) and Intercourse (2008). He received a National Magazine Award in 2005 for his short story The One in White .

He also wrote numerous scripts for the most important film studios in Hollywood , none of which have actually been made into films.

Works

Butler's works are shaped by a wide range of topics that are held together by humor and spirit, and his own writing style.

The short stories in Had a Good Time begin with short, encrypted messages on the back of postcards, telling the stories that inspired those hidden notes. These range from a mother who gets caught between the front lines of World War I to a man who is in love with a woman with wooden legs.

Mr. Spaceman , ostensibly a science fiction novel, tells the story of a humanoid extraterrestrial whose stay on earth takes place at the time of Jesus Christ .

Severence is a collection of stories set in the brief moments when a person's head was severed before he lost consciousness and life.

bibliography

Christopher Marlowe Cobb
  • 1 The Hot Country (2012)
  • 2 The Star of Istanbul (2013)
  • 3 The Empire of Night (2014)
  • 4 Paris in the Dark (2018)
Novels
  • The Alleys of Eden (1981)
  • Sun Dogs (1982)
  • Countrymen of Bones (1983)
  • On Distant Ground (1985)
  • Wabash (1987)
  • The Deuce (1989)
  • They Whisper (1994)
    • German: You whisper. Translated by Angelika Felenda. Goldmann, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-442-30493-8 .
  • The Deep Green Sea (1998)
    • English: The sea so green. German by Annette Meyer-Prien. Goldmann # 54123, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-442-54123-9 .
  • Mr. Spaceman (2000)
    • German: Interview with an alien. Translated by Winfried Czech. Goldmann-Taschenbuch # 44998, 2001, ISBN 3-442-44998-7 .
  • Fair Warning (2002)
  • Hell (2009)
  • A Small Hotel (2011)
  • Perfume River (2016)
  • The Hemingway Valise (Bibliomysteries # 34, 2018)
Collections
  • A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992)
    • German: Children of the Dust. Translated by Angelika Felenda. Goldmann # 42648, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-442-42648-0 .
  • Tabloid Dreams (1996)
    • German: Voices from the water bed. Translated by Angelika Felenda. Goldmann # 54034, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-442-54034-8 .
  • Had a Good Time (2004)
  • Severance (2006)
  • Intercourse (2008)
Short stories

1995:

  • Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot (in: The New Yorker, May 22, 1995 ; also: "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot" , 1996)

1996:

  • "Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Doomsday Meteor is Coming" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Every Man She Kisses Dies" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "JFK Secretly Attends Jackie Auction" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Nine-Year-Old Boy Is World's Youngest Hit Man" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Titanic Survivors Found in Bermuda Triangle" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Woman Loses Cookie Bake-Off, Sets Self on Fire" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Woman Struck by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )
  • "Woman Uses Glass Eye to Spy on Philandering Husband" (1996, in: Robert Olen Butler: Tabloid Dreams )

2016:

  • Soir Bleu (2016, in: Lawrence Block (Ed.): In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper )
    • German: Dusk. Translated by Frauke Czwikla. In: Lawrence Block (ed.): Nighthawks: Stories based on paintings by Edward Hopper. Droemer, 2017, ISBN 978-3-426-28164-2 .
Anthologies
  • The Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2008
  • The Best Small Fictions 2015
Non-fiction
  • From Where You Dream (2005)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence


personal data
SURNAME Butler, Robert Olen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Butler, Robert Olen Jr. (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Granite City , Illinois