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William Peter Blatty (born January 7, 1928) is an American writer and filmmaker. ''The Exorcist'', written in 1971,〔 is his most well-known novel; he also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation, for which he won an Academy Award, and wrote and directed the sequel, ''The Exorcist III.''〔 His most recent works include the novels ''Elsewhere'' (2009), ''Dimiter'' (2010), and ''Crazy'' (2010). In 2013, ''Demons Five, Exorcist Nothing: A Fable'' (1996) and ''Dimiter'' (2010) were re-released as revised editions with new covers and interior artwork. Each were limited to 250 signed copies.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=William Peter Blatty: Centipede Press )〕 The former had its subtitle changed from ''A Fable'' to ''A Hollywood Christmas Carol''. Blatty's upcoming publications include ''The Exorcist For The 21st Century'' featuring "an original and never before published adaptation for a new miniseries of Blatty's classic novel,"〔(More Book News... )〕 and a non-fiction book that is "part funny memoir and part proof of life after death," titled ''Finding Peter: A True Story Of The Hand Of Providence And Evidence Of Life After Death''.〔(Finding Peter: A Wild Ride In Search Of The Soul )〕 He is also featured in the 2014 ''Smoke And Mirrors'' anthology, featuring the teleplay "Hell Hospital" and the treatment "Faith". == Early life == Blatty was born in New York City, the son of Lebanese parents who came to America on a cattle boat, Mary (née Mouakad), niece of Bishop Germanos Mouakad, who founded the Missionary Society of St. Paul in Lebanon, and Peter Blatty, a cloth cutter in a garment factory. His father left home when William was three years old. He was raised in what he described as "comfortable destitution" by his deeply religious Catholic mother, whose sole support came from peddling homemade quince jelly in the streets of New York; she once offered a jar of it to Franklin D. Roosevelt when the President was cutting the ribbon for the Queens Midtown Tunnel, telling him, "For when you have company." He lived at 28 different addresses during his childhood because of constant evictions by landlords for nonpayment of rent. He attended Brooklyn Preparatory, a Jesuit school, on scholarship at a time when Joe Paterno was the football team's quarterback, graduated as class valedictorian in 1946, and then attended Georgetown University on a scholarship. He went on to The George Washington University for his master's degree in English Literature, for which he wrote a completely original thesis on the topic, "T.S. Eliot's Shakespearean Criticisms" (in which Blatty concluded that Eliot was "secretly jealous" of Shakespeare because the latter, unlike Eliot, was an "unconscious artist" who "wrote inspirationally as easily as he breathed"). Between 1950 and 1952, he variously worked as a door-to-door salesman for the Electrolux vacuum cleaner company, as a Gunther Beer truck relief driver, where he achieved a certain fame for burning out three truck clutches in six weeks, and as a ticket agent for United Airlines, all before enlisting in the United States Air Force, where he ultimately became head of the Policy Branch of the USAF Psychological Warfare Division, about which he would write in his humorous autobiography, ''Which Way to Mecca, Jack?'', that his "principal achievement" was formulating the principle that "a 500-pound sack of propaganda leaflets, if dropped from an altitude of 13,000 feet and provided it scored a direct hit, would drive one North Korean soldier approximately four feet into the ground." Mustering out of the Air Force, he joined the United States Information Agency and worked as an editor stationed in Beirut, Lebanon. He had determined to return to Beirut after his three-month "home leave", but when a co-editor asked him in the kitchen of his Beirut apartment during the course of a farewell party, "Bill, what happened to the dream?", he changed his mind. The "dream" was a career in the world of acting, publishing and entertainment. Blatty is a Roman Catholic.〔(Holy See Rules Blatty Petitioners Have Established “Well Founded Complaint” )〕 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「William Peter Blatty」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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