Stewart O'Nan
Author of:
The Names of the Dead & The Vietnam Reader |
I was born into a culture created by WWII and the Cold War. Then Vietnam came along and changed all that forever....I wrote about Vietnam because it
was all around me during my childhood but no one could explain it to me.
Still can't.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & HIS WORK
Stewart O'Nan—whose most recent published novels are Songs for the Missing and Last Night at the Lobster, will publish his 13th novel, Emily Alone, in March, 2011. He grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, the son of an engineer and an economics professor, addicted to cartoons, horror comics, Tarzan, science fiction, movies, TV, and garage punk. He studied aerospace engineering at Boston University, where he developed more rarified tastes (Camus, Coltrane, and the Beats), along with a lifelong obsession with the Boston Red Sox. After graduation, he worked as a test engineer for Grumman Aerospace on Long Island, devoting every spare moment he could find after hours to writing. Then, with the encouragement of his wife Trudy, he enrolled at Cornell University to pursue an MFA degree. By the time O'Nan finished graduate school, his short stories were attracting attention. He moved his family west and taught, first, at the University of Central Oklahoma and, then, the University of New Mexico. In 1993, he hit pay dirt when his short story collection, In The Walled City, won the Drue Heinz Prize for Short Fiction and his first novel, Snow Angels, then unpublished, was awarded the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal for Best Novel. The awards netted O’Nan a two-book contract with Doubleday, including Snow Angels, published in 1994.
Since then, he has gone on to forge a distinguished literary career. He frequently is described by both readders and writers as one of the best storytellers in contemporary fiction. A self-described "fiction-writing machine," the multi-award-winning O'Nan averages a book a year.In 1995 he and his family moved to Avon, CT . He was a writer-in-residence and taught creative writing at Trinity College in nearby Hartford until 1997. The research he did for his novel The Names of the Dead led to the creation of a class that studied Vietnam War memoirs as a form of literature, which he also initially taught. In 1996, Granta named him one of the Twenty Best Young American Novelists. Since then, the spread of O'Nan's reputation as a novelist has been complicated, perhaps slowed, by his admirable refusal to write to a niche market. Each of his novels differs in length, approach, and subject matter from the one before it.
"If there is an audience out there for me," O'Nan told Publishers Weekly, "I want them to be surprised when the next book comes out." And on another occasion: "If I have to deliver the same book over and over, I'll lose interest and I'll quit writing." There is a universal core to his fiction, however, and that is that horrible things happen to people, often without warning or reason. The suffering protagonist of O'Nan's novel, A Prayer for the Dying, observes, "It's astonishing how quickly things fall apart." That the human responses to such horrors are infinitely varied helps explain the diversity of O'Nan's novels to date. It's as if O'Nan, a Grumman design engineer before turning to writing full time, were doggedly testing to destruction character after character, to see what shapes the fragments take. And there is another consistent aspect to his work. His novels and stories often spotlight characters who are ignored by the mainstream, though they often are in plain sight. Key characters in his novels have included a woman on death row (The Speed Queen), a wife who waits 25 years for her husband to get out of prison when he probably wouldn't have been their in the first place except that he was poor (The Good Wife), the manager of a Red Lobster restaurant being closed in corporate downsizing (Last Night at
the Lobster, which was a national bestseller, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was name one of the New York Public Library Books to Remember.).
If blog postings are reflective of anything, it is that O'Nan's work appeals to young people trying to find their way in life at a time when the obstacles to getting even a tiny bit of crust from the American Dream pie are daunting, discouraging, depressing. They see themselves reflected in such characters as those of Snow Angels, recently made into a critically acclaimed indie film, directed by David Gordon Green, who also wrote the screenplay, and starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. Snow Angels is the story of the tragic events leading up to the death of a dissatisfied young wife and mother, Annie Marchand, at the hands of her tormented husband, Glenn. Annie's decline and fall are narrated by a neighbor, Artie Parkinson, a teenager at the time of the events. For Artie, the story of Annie, his former baby sitter, is inextricably linked to his own coming of age—his parents ' divorce, his first fumbling romance, his complex feelings for this troubled but alluring older woman.
Although some critics try to shoehorn some of his fiction into the horror genre, O'Nan's writing is far too complex and nuanced to permit such blatant categorization. True, his stories are suffused with trauma and tragedy, and his characters react unpredictably to the stress of terrible events; but the violence in O'Nan's fiction owes as much to Flannery O'Connor as to Stephen King — two authors he acknowledges as important influences, along with Richard Yates.
One can only stand back in admiration of O'Nan's determination repeatedly to tackle the stark fact of mortality and of his ability to do so with such chameleon-like virtuosity. Underscoring O'Nan's successful career as a novelist to date is another stark fact: he is not yet 50 years old.
And look what he has achieved!
Stewaand Stewart & Trudy O'Nan at premiere of Snow Angels
PremierSno
In addition to his 12 critically acclaimed novels and short stories under his own name, he has written an
entertaining spy thrillers, A Good Day to Die, under his pen name James Coltrane. Stewart told the Faulkner
Society that he chose the pen name as a tribute to one of his favorite musicians, John Coltrane. "I used the
pseudnym
because the novels were piling up, and I didn't think I'd achieved what I wanted to achieve with the
book (it's a retelling of For Whom the Bell Tolls)." The prolificO'Nan has written a nonfiction account of the notorious 1944 Hartford circus fire in The Circus Fire. He is co-author with fellow Bo-Sox fan Stephen King of Faithful, a
chronicle of the Boston Red Sox team's legendary 2004 season. He edited and introduced John Gardner's
On Writers and Writing, must reading for all writers seeking to perfect their craft. And he also is author/editor of
The Vietnam Reader, acknowledged as the best resource available for learning more about the war, it’s impact
on American society, and the art it inspired. In 2008, Lonely Road Books sold out their pre-orders for O'Nan's
screenplay simply titled Poe. It is a dramatic retelling of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. The screenplay was
released as a limited edition of 200 copies and as a lettered edition of 26 copies. It features a foreword by
Roger Corman, and frontispieces by Jill Bauman.
OTHER AWARDS
Ascent Fiction Prize for the short story: Econoline, 1988; the Columbia Fiction Award for the story, The Third of July, 1989; Oklahoma Book Award for The Names of the Dead (1996); Connecticut Book Awards for Wish You Were Here (20020 and The Night Country (2003); NY Times Notable Books: A World Away (1998) and A Prayer for the Dying (1999) .
ADVICE TO DEVELOPING WRITERS: TAKE YOUR MANUSCRIPT WITH YOU
In a 2002 article, Finding Time to Write, he wrote that very simple things can help, "like keeping the manuscript with you at all times. Always keep it with you. That way you can always go back to it. Doesn't have to be the whole manuscript. Another way to do this is to bring only the very last sentence that you worked on—where you left off, basically. Bring it with you on a sheet of paper or index card. Keep it on your person so that if you're running around the building where you're working, you take that five seconds to pull it out and look at it and say, 'Okay, oh, maybe I'll do this with it. Maybe I'll do something else with it. Maybe I'll fix it there.'"
ABOUT THE NAMES OF THE DEAD & THE VIETNAM READER
In his novel The Names of the Dead Stewart O’Nan’s principal character, Vietnam veteran Larry Markham, is the focus of two plots in two time periods, his wartime experiences told in lengthy flashbacks, and the life he endures 20 later, with memories, war souvenirs, and a mysterious stalker linking the present with the past. O’Nan’s theme is evident from the start and is repeatedly reinforced throughout his interwoven stories. The lives of Vietnam war veterans are defined by their war years and resolution to their traumas is only possible by, at least symbolically, bringing home all those who died in Vietnam.
The Vietnam Reader is a selection of the finest and best-known art from the American war in Vietnam, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, film, still photos, and popular song lyrics. All the strongest work is here, from mainstream bestsellers to radical poetry, from Tim O'Brien to Marvin Gaye. Also included are incisive reader's questions—useful for educators and book clubs—in a volume that makes an essential contribution to a wider understanding of the Vietnam War. This authoritative and accessible volume is sure to become a classic reference, as well as indispensable and provocative reading for anyone who wants to know more about the war that changed the face of late-twentieth-century America.
REVIEWS
Names of the Dead
Heart-rattling melodrama set against a thriller background hallmarks O'Nan's second novel,The Names of the Dead, just as it did with his first, Snow Angels, which won the 1993 Pirates Alley Faulkner Society’s Prize for Best Novel. By 1982, Larry Markham, an army medic in Vietnam, has been reduced to delivering hostess snack cakes around Ithaca, N.Y. One morning, he awakens from familiar dreams of combat to find that his wife, Vicki, has left him again. Fed up with his attachment to the war and with his reluctance to share his wartime memories, she has fled with their learning-disabled young son, Scott. As Larry struggles to reunite his household, the failing health of his father becomes a problem, as do his growing feelings for Donna, the lonely neighbor who looks out for him in Vicki's absence. Worse, Larry also is being stalked by a dangerous hospital escapee, a trained assassin and fellow Vietnam vet with a mysterious score to settle. This suspense element, though ably presented….is neither as poignant as Larry's complicated family drama nor as original. Unusually powerful… are the extensive renderings of Larry's Vietnam memories, which come alive with gruesome violence, complex camaraderie, tension, humor, hope, superstition and terror…this follow-up offers a confident, gripping narrative, as well as some of the most searing wartime storytelling in recent memory.
—Publishers Weekly
The Vietnam Reader
The author of a well-received novel about the struggles of a Vietnam vet to readjust to civilian life, The Names of the Dead, O'Nan has compiled a lengthy, varied, and somewhat idiosyncratic anthology of fiction and nonfiction by American writers about the war and its aftermath. The book was inspired, he notes in his preface, by his discovery that there was no wide-ranging compilation on the subject. O'Nan's selections, primarily excerpts from full-length works, include fiction by Tim O'Brien (Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried), James Webb (Fields of Fire), Larry Heinemann (Paco's Story), Stephen Wright (Meditations in Green), and John Del Vecchio (The 13th Valley), plus excerpts from memoirs by Robert Mason (Chickenhawk), Ronald J. Glasser (365 Days), and Michael Lee Lanning (The Only War We Had). O'Nan also includes the lyrics of a variety of period songs, such as The Ballad of the Green Berets and Born in the USA, critical summaries of films about the war, and some poetry. His adroit notes point out some of the most salient features of this literature: the relative neglect of the Vietnamese experience of war; the evolution of the American soldier protagonist from hero to cynical survivor; and the persistent attempt to puzzle out what the war tells us about our society and government. A glossary, bibliography, and chronology further help set the work in context. While the inclusion of more less-familiar writers would have been welcome, this is nonetheless a powerful, deeply revealing collection.
—Kirkus Reviews
Last Night at the Lobster
In his 10th novel, Stewart O’Nan proves once again why he’s the "bard of the working class" by exploring how the closing of one chain restaurant profoundly affects many lives. Last Night at the Lobster may be a small story, dealing with the mundane details of restaurant life, but O’Nan’s complex characters provide a service—an everyday feat that many American novels ignore. Almost all critics praised the novel as a triumph in realism. O’Nan has certainly written bigger, more plot-driven stories before, but Lobster shows off his "pitch perfect ear for life in late 20th century America" to great effect (San Francisco Chronicle). It’s a "Zen koan of a book" (Los Angeles Times), and not to be missed—especially if you’ve served your share of scampi in life.
—Booklist.
A GOOD DAY TO DIE (Writing as James Coltrane)
Coltrane’s first novel renders tense emotions in a tale of a doomed mission and a search for redemption.
—Booklist
This was a lovely surprise. At one of our One Book events I was complaining to Mr. O’Nan that I have read all his books and am having many withdrawal symptoms. He suggested A Good Day to Die by James Coltrane. When I told him it was probably the best war/spy novel I have ever read and asked him if he knew the author he said “Thank you. It’s me.”
—Word Press
WHAT OTHER WRITERS SAY ABOUT HIM
It’s easy to imagine that O’Nan is on a kind of mission to restore a simple, true sense of humanity to the novel: a worthy goal, indeed.
—Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times of London, author most recently of the novel Seizure.
Stewart O’Nan’s turf is the large swath of the country that lies in the dark shadow of the American dream. His fiction tends to chronicle the lives of the two classes that dwell there: the poor and, as he puts it, “the richer poor.” He is a poet of strip mall ennui, road rage, fluorescent lighting, and the sparse lawns of prefabricated real estate developments. His characters strive to make their mortgage payments, hold full-time jobs and keep the refrigerator stocked, but struggle to fend off the lurking nightmares of domestic crime, alcoholism and war trauma. They buy lottery tickets, and they always lose.
— Nathaniel Rich, an editor at The Paris Review. Author of the novel, The Mayor’s Tongue.
O'Nan explores a problem — the way the judicial system discriminates against the poor — through his character, rather than the other way around. For that reason, The Good Wife is one of the most authentic contemporary political novels I've read by an American writer. What's more, O'Nan's prose is stripped down and full of inelegant brand names that do not let readers forget where we are: Owego, N.Y., from the mid-70's to the present… . There are novels that create a mood so intense that, as long as the story lasts, the reader can't escape it. I was gloomy all week while I was reading The Good Wife, and I felt as if I were blinking when Tommy finally sees the exterior of the maximum-security prison where he served his sentence: ''It's even uglier on the outside,'' he remarks -- an observation that could serve as an epigraph for the book.
—Nell Freudenberger, author of the short fiction collection Lucky Girls.
Whether or not you respond to O’Nan’s brand of American vernacular, his deadpan style, and his elaborate premises, he remains an honest conceptualist. And more often than not, his experiments work. Emily Dickinson wrote, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant . . . / The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.” The notion of slanted truth is a fabulously apt description of O’Nan’s approach to storytelling.
—
Minna Proctor, author of Do You Hear What I Hear, Federico Fellini and His Life and Work, Love in Vain with Federigo Tozzi.
It seems to me that Stewart has a particular interest in giving voice to the people who have fallen through the cracks, and been silenced by their own cultural invisibility. It's a worthy goal — in literature and in life.
—Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit From the Goon Squad and The Keep
There's an unadorned steadiness and truth in his work that, it turns out, matches the decency and generosity of the Stewart I got to know a couple of years back. His support when I was fundraising for the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, CT was invaluable. So is his work
.—Jon Clinch, author of Finn and Kings of the Earth
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