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Robert Stone (August 21, 1937 – January 10, 2015) was an American novelist. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once for the PEN/Faulkner Award.〔〔〔 Stone was five times a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction,〔the five finalists: ''Dog Soldiers'' in 1975; ''A Flag for Sunrise'' was nominated twice for the NBA, in 1982 (hardcover) & 1983 (paperback); ''Outerbridge Reach'' in 1992; and Stone's final NBA finalist nomination was in 1998 for ''Damascus Gate''〕 which he did receive in 1975 for his novel ''Dog Soldiers''.〔 ''Time'' magazine included this novel in its list ''TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005''. ''Dog Soldiers'' was adapted into the film ''Who'll Stop the Rain'' (1978) starring Nick Nolte, from a script that Stone co-wrote. During his lifetime Stone received material support and recognition including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Stone also offered his own support and recognition of writers during his lifetime, serving as Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors for over thirty years.〔http://www.penfaulkner.org/2015/01/28/episode-39-a-remembrance-of-robert-stone〕 Stone's best known work is characterized by action-tinged adventures, political concerns and dark humor. Many of his novels are set in unusual, exotic landscapes of raging social turbulence, such as the Vietnam War; a post-coup violent banana republic in Central America; Jim Crow-era New Orleans, and late 1990's Jerusalem. ==Life== Robert Stone was born in Brooklyn, New York to a "family of Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Catholics who made their living as tugboat workers in New York harbor."〔 Until the age of six he was raised by his mother, who suffered from schizophrenia; after she was institutionalized, he spent several years in a Catholic orphanage. In his short story "Absence of Mercy", which he has called autobiographical,〔(Salon | The Salon Interview: Robert Stone, page 2 )〕 the protagonist Mackay is placed at age five in an orphanage described as having had "the social dynamic of a coral reef". The battered protagonists and "harrowing creations" in Stone's fiction often transmit a "mix of gloom and bleak irony" that would seem to come from Stone's personal experience: he had a difficult upbringing (besides his mother's schizophrenia, his father abandoned Stone's mother soon after his birth) and Stone had his share of struggles with alcohol and drugs. He was kicked out of a Marist high school during his senior year〔 for "drinking too much beer and being 'militantly atheistic' " and didn't graduate.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Robert Stone, Panelist - January 2006 Key West Literary Seminar )〕 Soon afterwards, Stone joined the Navy for four years. At sea he traveled to many remote places, including Antarctica and Egypt. But according to Stone, it was his first shore leave in a pre-Fidel Castro era Havana, Cuba that left a mark on him in terms of its lasting impact on Stone's future writing: Stone had many nautical experiences that would shape his creative imagination, some of these described in his memoir ''Prime Green'', published in 2007. These first-hand experiences would at times turn violent: Stone witnessed the French Army bombing Port Said. In the early 1960s, he briefly attended New York University; worked as a copy boy at the ''New York Daily News''; married and moved to New Orleans; and attended the Wallace Stegner workshop at Stanford University, where he began writing a novel. Although he met the influential Beat Generation writer Ken Kesey and other Merry Pranksters, he was not a passenger on the famous 1964 bus trip to New York, contrary to some media reports.〔(Counterculture Lion, Back in His Tidy Jungle, ''New York Times'', January 5, 2007 )〕 Living in New York at the time, he met the bus on its arrival and accompanied Kesey to an "after-bus party" whose attendees included a dyspeptic Jack Kerouac.〔Stone, Robert: "Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties", pages 121–22. HarperCollins, 2007〕 Stone taught in the creative writing programs at various university programs around the United States. He was at Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars from 1993–1994 and subsequently at Yale University. For the 2010–2011 school year, Stone was the Endowed Chair in the English Department at Texas State University-San Marcos. He was also active in many of the writing seminars in and around Key West, Florida〔 where he resided during the winter months. Stone was appointed an honorary director of the Key West Literary Seminar serving in that capacity during the final decade of his life.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Writers' Workshop - Robert Stone: Advanced Fiction - Key West Literary Seminar )〕 At age 72, just after the publication of his second short-story collection ''Fun With Problems'', Stone admitted (during a newspaper interview) that he suffered from severe emphysema: "It's my punishment for chain-smoking," he says. But with a wry laugh, he recalls his reaction to being told of the harm smoking could cause him in old age: "I'm not going to know I'm alive!".〔 According to his literary agent, Stone died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on January 10, 2015 in Key West, where he and his wife had spent their winters for more than twenty years. At the time of his death, Stone was survived by his wife (of 55 years) Janice and their two (adult-age) children daughter Deirdre and son Ian.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Stone (novelist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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