Robert Olen Butler

Robert Olen Butler Jr. (b. January 20, 1945) is an American fiction writer. His short-story collection "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" (1992) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993. [cite web
last =
first =
title =The Pulitzer Prizes
url =http://www.pulitzer.org/
accessdate = ]

Early life

Butler was born in Granite City, Illinois, the son of Robert Olen Butler Sr., an actor and theater professor who became the chairman of the theatre department of Saint Louis University, and his wife, the former Lucille Frances Hall, an executive secretary. [cite web
title =Inventory of the Robert Olen Butler Writings
publisher =Florida State University Libraries
date =
url =http://www.lib.fsu.edu/dlmc/dlc/files/dlmc/FTaSU2007006.pdf
format = PDF
accessdate = ]

He attended Northwestern University as a theater major (B.S., 1967) and switched to playwriting at the University of Iowa (M.A., 1969).

Butler served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971, first as a counter-intelligence special agent for the Army and later as a translator. He rose to the rank of sergeant in the Army Military 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 the Vietnam 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 of Saigon, where nobody ever seemed to sleep, and just walk the alleys and crouch in the doorways with the people," Butler told "The 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." [Peter Applebome, "An Author Catapulted Into the Foreground", "The New York Times", 20 April 1993]

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 joined Fairchild Publications, where he worked on the staffs of trade publications such as "Electronic News". From 1975 until 1985, he was the editor-in-chief of Fairchild's "Energy User News" (now "Energy & Power Management"). [It is now a publication of BNP Media.]

Literary career

"Every word of my first four published novels was written on a legal pad, by hand, on my lap, on the Long Island Railroad as I commuted back and forth from Sea Cliff to Manhattan," Butler has said about his early writing while a Fairchild employee.cite web
last = Weich
first =Dave
title =Robert Olen Butler Plays with Voices
work =
publisher =Powells.com Interviews
month =March | year =2000
url =http://www.powells.com/authors/butler.html
accessdate = ]

The author's first novel was "The Alleys of Eden", which was published in 1981 by Horizon Press after being rejected by 21 publishers. Its protagonist is an American deserter who decides to stay in Vietnam, as Butler's one-time writing professor Anatole Broyard wrote in "The 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."cite web
last = Broyard
first =Anatole
title =THE ALLEYS OF EDEN; By Robert Olen Butler (review)
work =Books of the Times
publisher =The New York Times
date =November 11, 1981
url =http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E5D71E39F932A25752C1A967948260
accessdate = ] Prior to the publication of "The 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."

His second novel was "Sun Dogs" (Horizon, 1983), which "The New York Times" described as having "some powerful moments, some engrossing scenes and deft touches, but there is little momentum, no satisfying pattern, none of the magic of synergy."

Butler's stories have appeared in such publications as "The New Yorker", "Esquire", "Harper's", "The Atlantic Monthly", "GQ", and "". He has had stories included in editions of "The 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. [cite web
last = Murphy
first =Jessica
title =Faraway Voices (interview)
work =
publisher =The Atlantic Online
date =June 14, 2004
url =http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406u/int2004-06-14
accessdate = ]

"Severance: Stories", his collection of 240-word short stories about the post-beheading thoughts of decapitated individuals (from Nicole Brown Simpson to Louis XVI to the author himself) was the basis of "Severance", a one-act play by David Jette. It was produced in 2007 at McCadden Place Theatre in Los Angeles. Butler has described "Severance" as his best and most ambitious book. [cite web
last = Anderson
first =Jeffrey M.,
title =Why I write: Robert Olen Butler
work =
publisher =The Examiner
date =September 30, 2006
url =http://www.examiner.com/a-319386~Why_I_write:_Robert_Olen_Butler.html
accessdate = ]

Butler's short–story collections "Tabloid Dreams" (1996) and "Had a Good Time" (2004) take their inspiration from popular culture. The stories in "Tabloid Dreams" were spun from the titles of outlandish articles in supermarket tabloids. "Had a Good Time", which the "San Francisco Chronicle" called a "mealy-mouthed volume ... [d] impled by clichés and drippy bits of hokum Americana", [Freeman, John. cite web|url= http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2004/08/22/RVGH889K2R1.DTL|date= 22 August 2004|accessdate= 2007-08-04|title= "Faces look out from postcards to inspire stories"|work= The San Francisco Chronicle] 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 in "Harper's" in February 2003. [Butler. cite web|url= http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/02/0079484|month= February | year= 2003|accessdate= 2007-08-04|title= "Mother in the Trenches"|work= Harper's Magazine] It traces the journey of Mrs. Jack Gaines, a prosperous matron, from her comfortable home to the battlefields of World 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 helmet.

In 2001, during a live broadcast over the Internet, Butler wrote a short story over 17 sessions, each lasting two hours. As the author explained of the broadcasts, "What we're trying to do here is reproduce for you what is normally hidden behind the veil of private life." [cite web
last = Freeman
first =John
title =Faces look out from postcards to inspire stories
work =
publisher =San Francisco Chronicle
date =August 22, 2004
url =http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2004/08/22/RVGH889K2R1.DTL
accessdate = ]

In 2007, Butler and the French writer Camille Laurens collaborated on a short detective story published in "As You Were Saying" (Dalkey Archive), a collection of stories by French-American writing teams. Butler and Laurens's effort was described as "vaguely noirish, hip and blandly cosmopolitan" by Jonathan Derbyshire in "Prospect Magazine". [cite web
last = Derbyshire
first =Jonathan
title =An Unlikely Romance
work =
publisher =Prospect Magazine
month =August | year =2007
url =http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?&id=9742
accessdate = ]

Butler taught creative writing at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, from 1985 to 2000 . He then joined the faculty of Florida State University as a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor, holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing.

Awards and honors

Butler is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2001 he won a National Magazine Award for "Fair Warning", a short story that was published in the journal "Zoetrope: All-Story", and four years later, he won another National Magazine Award for "The One in White", a short story published in "The Atlantic Monthly".

In 1993, his first story collection, "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain", won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. "The New York Times" praised the book's "startling, dreamlike" [Citation
last = Applebome
first =Peter
author-link =
title =An Author Catapulted into the Foreground
newspaper =New York Times
date = April 20, 1993
url =] stories about the lives of Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana, and said the it was "remarkable not only for its flaws, but for how beautifully it achieves its daring project of making the Vietnamese real." [Citation
last =Packer
first =George
author-link =
title =From the Mekong to the Bayous
newspaper =New York Times
date =June 7, 1992
url =http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEFDB1030F934A35755C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1] The Pulitzer committee said that the stories "raise the literature of the Vietnam conflict to an original and highly personal new level." [Citation
last =
first =
author-link =
title =Winners of the 1993 Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism, Literature, and the Arts
newspaper =New York Times
date = April 14, 1993
url =]

Butler also is the judge of the annual Robert Olen Butler Prize, a short-fiction award founded and sponsored by Del Sol Press. [cite web
last =
first =
title =2006 ROB Fiction Prize Results
publisher = Del Sol Press
date =
url =http://www.webdelsol.com/DelSolPress/dsp-fiction-competition.htm
accessdate = ]

Marriages

On August 10, 1968 Butler married Carol Supplee. They divorced in January 1972."Who's Who In America 2006"]

On July 1, 1972 Butler married poet Marylin Geller (now known professionally as Marylin Krepf). [Citation
last = Jason
first =Philip K.
title =Poets-in-law share rhyme and reason
newspaper =Naples Sun Times
date =September 13, 2006
url =http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17191753&BRD=2605&PAG=461&dept_id=581759&rfi=6] They had one child, Joshua Robert Butler (born 1974), and divorced July 1987. [Citation
last = Applebome
first = Peter
title =An Author Catapulted Into the Foreground
newspaper =The New York Times
date = April 20, 1993
url = ]

On July 21, 1987 Butler married Maureen Donlan. They divorced in March 1995.Who's Who In America 2006]

On 23 April 1995, at Tavern on the Green restaurant in New York City, Butler married the novelist and playwright Elizabeth Dewberry (born 1963). [Citation
last = Brady
first =Lois Smith
title =Vows: Robert O. Butler, Elizabeth Dewberry
newspaper =The New York Times
date =May 7, 1995
url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE3DE143BF934A35756C0A963958260] The couple ended their marriage in July 2007 ("The Washington Post" reported that they were officially divorced on 19 July), according to an email Butler sent to his graduate students and fellow professors at Florida State University regarding Dewberry's decision to leave him for communications mogul Ted Turner. [cite web
last =
first =
title =Elizabeth Dewberry Left Robert Olen Butler To Join Ted Turner's Collection
publisher =Gawker.com
date = July 31, 2007
url =http://gawker.com/news/money-changes-everything/elizabeth-dewberry-left-robert-olen-butler-to-join-ted-turners-collection-284346.php
accessdate = ] A controversy arose over the highly personal revelations contained within Butler's email, which was leaked by one of its recipients and subsequently reported on by major international media outlets, such as "The Washington Post", "The New York Times", and National Public Radio.

Bibliography

Novels

*"The Alleys of Eden" (1981), ISBN 0-8180-0631-5
*"Sun Dogs" (1982), ISBN 0-8180-0636-6
*"Countrymen of Bones" (1983), ISBN 0-8180-0639-0
*"On Distant Ground" (1985), ISBN 0-394-54040-9
*"Wabash" (1987), ISBN 0-394-55597-X
*"The Deuce" (1989), ISBN 0-671-67093-X
*"They Whisper" (1994), ISBN 0-8050-1985-5
*"The Deep Green Sea" (1997), ISBN 0-8050-3130-8
*"Mr. Spaceman" (2000), ISBN 0-8021-1660-4
*"Fair Warning" (2002), ISBN 0-87113-833-6

hort story collections

*"A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" (1992), ISBN 0-8050-1986-3
*"Tabloid Dreams" (1996), ISBN 0-8050-3131-6
*"Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards" (2004), ISBN 0-8021-1777-5
*"Mots de tête" (2005), ISBN 2-7436-1392-0 (French edition, and first publication in book form, of "Severance")
*"Severance" (2006), ISBN 0-8118-5614-3

Non-fiction

*"" (2005), ISBN 0-8021-1795-3

Other publications

*Introduction to "Vietnam War Literature: A Catalogue" (1990), ISBN none
*"The Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2004" (2005), ISBN 0-9748229-5-7
*"The Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2005" (2006), ISBN 0-9748229-8-1

References

External links

;General
* [http://www.fsu.edu/profiles/butler/ Robert Olen Butler faculty page at FSU]
* [http://www.delsolpress.org/dsp-fictionprize.htm/ Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize]

;Work
* [http://www.fsu.edu/~butler/ Inside Creative Writing: Watch a Pulitzer Prize Winner Create an Original Story]
* [http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/writers/butler.htm Butler article for the U.S. Department of State website about his postcard-inspired fiction]
* [http://all-story.com/search.cgi?action=show_author&author_id=68 Links to three stories published in "Zoetrope: All-Story"]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=73Ji9BKNo6kC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22mother+in+the+trenches%22+butler&source=web&ots=SaRx-EXeWe&sig=MVKdJTkf8v_0fIHoJplq1H7LOiI#PPA19,M1 Excerpt from "Mother in the Trenches"]
* [http://www.webdelsol.com/butler/rob-6.htm Non-fiction article about Saigon] , written for "Condé Nast Traveler"

;Interviews of Butler
* [http://www.powells.com/authors/butler.html Interview with Dave Weich of Powells.com]
* [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406u/int2004-06-14 Interview with Jessica Murphy of "The Atlantic Monthly"]
* [http://wiredforbooks.org/robertbutler/ 1985 interview with Robert Olen Butler] by Don Swaim at Wired for Books
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12421611 1 August 2007 interview with NPR regarding the breakup of his fourth marriage]

;Reviews
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E1D9153CF936A2575BC0A9629C8B63 "New York Times" review of "Had a Good Time: Stories From American Postcards"]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E5D71E39F932A25752C1A967948260 "New York Times" review of "The Alleys of Eden"]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DE3DC1238F93AA35752C0A965948260 "New York Times" review of "Sun Dogs"]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE4DA143BF931A25753C1A965948260 "New York Times" review of "Countrymen of Bones"]

Persondata
NAME = Butler, Robert Olen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH = January 20 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH = Granite City, Illinois
DATE OF DEATH =
PLACE OF DEATH =