“Claes Wahlin on författargeniet that was hailed only after his death”
“The last few years live John Williams in Key West, Florida. He teaches at the university of Denver, trailing on his syrgasmaskin as he inhales from the at the same time as he kedjeröker. The 1974 National book award for Augustus has given him a certain reputation: invitations, a little less teaching, time to write the novel that would become his masterpiece, ”The sleep of reason”. But he can’t be bothered to finish the novel, the two section that becomes clear published posthumously in the Denver Quarterly. On 3 march 1994 and he dies, the 72-year-old.”
“William Stoner, the main character in the novel that bears his surname, is a university graduate who leave their farming parents on the farm in Texas to read to become an agronomist. But he switches to literature and becomes a teacher without an academic career. He dies just as unnoticed as he had lived.”
“It is easy to see a portrait in the novel by its author. Some similarities exist, as his love for literature and his quest to always be true to the mission that teachers undertook. But about where the similarity ends.”
“Williams did a lot before the Season. He wrote in a local newspaper and did radio shows in the late 30’s. During the war he was stationed in Burma and India, which radiotelegrafist and was considering to continue with the radio in it civil. But författardrömmen was there all the time, he wrote constantly. Returning home, he writes clearly in a novel, Nothing but the night, which has been difficult to find a publisher, and as quickly forgotten. The collection The broken landscape (1949) was also not a success.”
“We meet men, spirits, hierarchies, and economic concerns, but also the energy that seems to be constitutive for an american man in the post-war period.”
“He takes a degree at Denver university in the late 40’s, writing a thesis on renässanspoeten Fulke Greville and continues to write. As a lecturer and tutor, he was appreciated, even if his alcohol consumption was the least significant. His drinking does not seem to have prevented him in their academic tasks. He was also one of the first to lead writing workshops.”
“Williams must have been a divinely gifted story teller and made the success even of the most reluctant when he read aloud from his own works. There is no doubt about his safety as a stylist. Every paragraph in his novels, he learned by heart before he wrote it down.”
“Butcher’s crossing coming out in 1960 and is classed as a västernroman in a review in The New York Times, which was the same as to kill it. In the novel to Williams to make up with transcendentalister, as Ralph Waldo Emerson, the romantic approach to nature, in order to depict the nature of-factly, without a mitigating feature. Butcher’s crossing is about how William Andrews drop out of his studies at Harvard in order to seek the adventure that buffeljägare in the american west. “
“He should become a man, learn to use and master nature, but it is not so good. He is conducting the same kind of trip as a Stoner, but in reverse: from an academic life to a more rural existence. It’s Stoner (1965), who came to be the novel that later was discovered, and, thanks in part to some entusiasters propagation of the, becoming an american modern classic.”
“Williams was in favour of a traditional prose. In his teaching, he refused a long time to teach on the modernists, he wanted to continue in the tradition from the 1800-century realistic own resonant style of fiction, and he also gets difficult with the 60’s motkulturer.”
“When he receives the National book award for Augustus 1974 so unfortunately, the price for the first time shared (with John Barth Chimera). Prisdiskussionen came more to be about the sharing of the award, than if Williams novel. So not it becomes a real success.”
“But the prestige increases, he gets more time to write, even if he now as soon as tolerated by the Denver university for both its old-fashioned, litteratursyn, which even by american standards, extensive grabbighet. You can say that he is isolated, partly on a voluntary basis.”
“Charles J Shields’s biography is the first of Williams, and he has to rely not only on archival material, but also on a series of interviews with acquaintances and surviving. “
“The latter is possibly a problem, because it is difficult to know what credibility to attach to these. I am not sure that, as Shields writes, ”[e]matter for a biography should be the item’s search for an identity”. “
“When the object is no longer alive, it must be difficult to be sure in his pursuit of a deeper, psychological importance, and secondly, was the idea of an identity is hardly equally valid for Williams’ generation that now is.”
“Shields, however, manage to give a picture of how life was for a medelbegåvad graduates with författarambitioner in the post-war united states. “
“We meet men, spirits, hierarchies, and economic concerns, but also the energy that seems to be constitutive for an american man in the post-war period. “
“You can also catch a glimpse of the prevailing literary taste, which is constantly an other than Williams, control romanernas ows, but at the same time, which is also typically american, how, even in the literary world revanschen is possible, albeit posthumously, as in the case of John Williams.”
“John Williams – the man who wrote the perfect novel”
“Trans. Ragnar Strömberg”
