Robert Olen Butler | |
|---|---|
 Butler at the 2016 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | (1945-01-20)January 20, 1945 (age 81) Granite City, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, short fiction writer |
| Education | Northwestern University (BS) University of Iowa (MFA) |
| Period | 1981–present |
| Literary movement | Magical realism |
| Notable works | A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,Tabloid Dreams |
Robert Olen Butler (born January 20, 1945) is an American fiction writer. His short-story collectionA Good Scent from a Strange Mountain was awarded thePulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993.[1]
Butler was born inGranite City, Illinois, to Robert Olen Butler Sr., an actor and theater professor who became the chairman of the theater department ofSaint Louis University, and his wife, the former Lucille Frances Hall, an executive secretary.[2]
Butler attendedNorthwestern University as a theater major (BS, 1967) and switched toplaywriting at theUniversity of Iowa (MA, 1969).
Butler served inVietnam from 1969 to 1971, first as acounter-intelligence special agent for theArmy and later as a translator. He rose to the rank ofsergeant in the ArmyMilitary Intelligence Corps. His experiences during that period have informed his writings, and as a result, in 1987 Butler received the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award from theVietnam Veterans of America for outstanding contributions to American culture by a veteran. "My greatest pleasure in life was at 2 in the morning to wander out into the steamy back alleys ofSaigon, where nobody ever seemed to sleep, and just walk the alleys and crouch in the doorways with the people," Butler toldThe New York Times in 1993. "The Vietnamese were the warmest, most open and welcoming people I've ever met, and they just invited me into their homes and into their culture and into their lives."[3]
After working as a steel mill laborer, a taxi driver, and a substitute teacher in high schools in the years following his tour of duty in Vietnam, Butler joinedFairchild Publications, where he worked on the staffs of trade publications such asElectronic News. From 1975 until 1985, he was the editor-in-chief of Fairchild'sEnergy User News (nowEnergy & Power Management).[4]
Robert Olen Butler is the author of 12 novels and six short story collections, includingA Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In a review for theGuardian newspaper, renowned author Claire Messud wrote, "The book has attracted such acclaim not simply because it is beautifully and powerfully written, but because it convincingly pulls off an immense imaginative risk. . . . Butler has not entered the significant and ever-growing canon of Vietnam-related fiction (he has long been a member)—he has changed its composition forever."[5]
Butler began writing novels on theLong Island Rail Road while working as a publicist for Fairchild Publications. "Every word of my first four published novels was written on a legal pad, by hand, on my lap, on the Long Island Rail Road as I commuted back and forth fromSea Cliff toManhattan," Butler has said of his early writing.[6]
Butler's first novel wasThe Alleys of Eden, which was published in 1981 by Horizon Press after being rejected by 21 publishers.[6] Its protagonist is an American deserter who decides to stay in Vietnam, as Butler's onetime writing professorAnatole Broyard wrote inThe New York Times, "because, with all its troubles, Vietnam seems to him to retain more of its integrity, its sense of self, than the America he has left behind."[7] Before the publication ofThe Alleys of Eden, Butler had written, by his estimation, "five ghastly novels, about forty dreadful short stories, and twelve truly awful full-length plays, all of which have never seen the light of day and never will."[6]
Butler has always been a controversial artist, seemingly reinventing himself with each new novel or short story collection. His shape-shifting often polarizes reviewers, as with his second novel,Sun Dogs (Horizon, 1983), whichThe New York Times said had "some powerful moments, some engrossing scenes and deft touches, but there is little momentum, no satisfying pattern, none of the magic of synergy."[7] Conversely, theFt. Worth Star-Telegram called the book "full of power and energy...mov[ing] from the most feverish of prose to a flatness and sparseness that is reminiscent of the best of Chandler and Hammett. And most importantly, he has something to say... Butler is an intelligent novelist who cares about his characters. He is skillful enough to make the reader feel the same way. It is not often that we get the chance to witness the birth of something this important."[8]
Butler's stories have appeared in such publications asThe New Yorker,Esquire,Harper's,The Atlantic Monthly,GQ, andZoetrope: All-Story. He has had stories in 12 editions ofThe Best American Short Stories,New Stories From the South, and numerous college literature textbooks. Butler has also written screenplays for film and television, most of them based on other writers' material.[9]
Butler's short-story collectionsTabloid Dreams (1996) andHad a Good Time (2004) take their inspiration from popular culture. The stories inTabloid Dreams were spun from the titles of outlandish articles in supermarket tabloids.Had a Good Time builds its narratives around the images on vintage American picture postcards, which Butler has collected for more than a decade. One example is the tale "Mother in the Trenches", first published inHarper's in February 2003.[10] It traces the journey of Mrs. Jack Gaines, a prosperous matron, from her comfortable home to the battlefields ofWorld War I France, in order to convince her soldier son to come home; the story's basis is a period postcard that depicts a stout, middle-aged woman wearing dark clothes and a cloche hat.
Again the critical response varied dramatically. TheSan Francisco Chronicle said that the stories "feel like a literary parlor game";[11]The Boston Globe called them full of "crisp writing, marvelous imagining, the discussion of large, existential questions that are as central to life now as they were a hundred years ago."[12]
Severance, Butler's 2006 collection of 240-word short stories about the post-beheading thoughts of decapitated people (fromNicole Brown Simpson toLouis XVI to Butler himself) was the basis ofSeverance, a one-act play byDavid Jette. It was produced in 2007 at McCadden Place Theatre in Los Angeles. At the time, Butler describedSeverance as his best and most ambitious book.[13]
This was the first of an extended venture into defining and exploring the short short story form. His companion collection,Intercourse, comprising 100 very short stories, revealed the inner monologues of couples (often famous) engaged in sexual intercourse.Weegee Stories, presenting the inner monologues of the subjects of 60 iconic photographs byArthur "Weegee" Fellig, continued his interest in the form. He also published a theory of the short short story inNarrative Magazine.[14]
As further evidence of his predilection for self-reinvention, in 2009 Butler publishedHell, a "roaring satire"[15] of a novel set entirely in the underworld. Donna Seaman ofBooklist, the American Library Association's magazine, called his 2011 novelA Small Hotel a "sexy novel of psychological suspense", adding, "Butler executes a plot twist of profound proportions in this gorgeously controlled, unnerving, and beautifully revealing tale of the consequences of emotional withholding."[15]
In still another act of reinvention, Butler published his first literary/historical/espionage/thriller,The Hot Country, with Otto Penzler'sMysterious Press in the fall of 2012.
In 2001, Butler wrote in real time a complete short story, "This isEarl Sandt," from first inspiration to final story, in a webcast of 17 two-hour sessions. As he said of the broadcasts, "What we're trying to do here is reproduce for you what is normally hidden behind the veil of private life".[16] The webcasts, under the title "Inside Creative Writing," have been available on iTunes.
Butler taught creative writing from 1985 to 2000 atMcNeese State University inLake Charles, Louisiana, with his colleagueJohn Wood, to whom he dedicatedA Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. He then joined the faculty ofFlorida State University as a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor, holding theMichael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing.
Butler is a recipient of aGuggenheim Fellowship in fiction and aNational Endowment for the Arts grant, and was a finalist for thePEN/Faulkner Award. In 2001 he won aNational Magazine Award for "Fair Warning," a short story published in the journalZoetrope: All-Story, and four years later he won another National Magazine Award for "The One in White," a short story published inThe Atlantic Monthly.
In 1993, his first story collection,A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, won thePulitzer Prize for fiction.The New York Times praised the book's "startling, dreamlike"[17] stories about the lives of Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana, and said it was "remarkable not for its flaws, but for how beautifully it achieves its daring project of making the Vietnamese real."[18] The Pulitzer committee said that the stories "raise the literature of the Vietnam conflict to an original and highly personal new level."[19]
Butler also judged the annualRobert Olen Butler Prize, a short-fiction award founded and sponsored byDel Sol Press, with the most recent prize awarded in 2010.[20] He also judgesThe Southeast Review's short-short story contest.[21]
On August 10, 1968, Butler married Carol Supplee. They divorced in January 1972.[22]
On July 1, 1972, Butler married poet Marylin Geller (now known professionally asMarylin Krepf).[23]
On July 21, 1987, Butler married Maureen Donlan. They divorced in March 1995.[22]
On April 23, 1995, atTavern on the Green restaurant in New York City, Butler married the novelist and playwright Elizabeth Dewberry.[24] They ended their marriage in July 2007 and were divorced on July 19, according to an email Butler sent to his graduate students and fellow professors at Florida State University about Dewberry's decision to leave him for communications mogulTed Turner.[25] A controversy arose over the highly personal revelations in Butler's email, which was leaked by one of its recipients and subsequently reported on by major international media outlets, such asThe Washington Post,The New York Times, andNational Public Radio.
On November 22, 2011, Butler married Kelly Lee Daniels, now known professionally as K. Iver, a trans non-binary poet. They divorced in April 2020.[citation needed]
On June 19, 2022, Butler married Clara Guzman Herrera.[26] She died on August 26, 2024, inMonticello, Florida.[27]
Archival collections
