Paul West (poet)

Paul West (February 23, 1930) is a novelist and poet. He was born in Eckington, Derbyshire in England to Alfred and Mildred (Noden) West. Currently, he resides in upstate New York with his wife Diane Ackerman, a writer, poet, and naturalist. West is the author of twenty-four novels and three books of poetry, and has also written autobiography and nonfiction.

West grew up amongst a family that loved books and considered the written word to be sacred. This love of books pushed him to gain a diverse education through his studies at Oxford and Columbia Universities. West's literary craft earned him the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award in 1985 and the Lannon Prize for Fiction and Grand Prix Halperine-Kaminsky awards in 1993.

Paul West has an eclectic style. Common themes from his works include psychic abuse, failed relationships, and societal inadequacy. However, there is a strong sense of self-discovery and survival amongst these themes. His works are an outpouring on his view of the human condition. In an interview with David W. Madden, Mr. West remarked that he always listens to some kind of classical music while writing and composes all of his works using a typewriter. The revision process is fascinating for him and one he laboriously proceeds through with each literary piece.

West and his novel, "The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg", figure prominently in a chapter in Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee's book "Elizabeth Costello". Coetzee's title character is so disturbed by the horrors West describes in his book that she questions, in a lecture given at a conference in Amsterdam on evil, whether a writer can immerse themselves in such darkness without suffering some sort of personal harm. West, unbeknownst to Costello until only hours before her very pointed lecture, is also attending the conference.

Works

Long Fiction:

• "A Quality of Mercy", 1961
• "Tenement of Clay", 1965
• "Alley Jaggers", 1966
• "I'm Expecting to Live Quite Soon", 1970
• "Caliban's Filibuster", 1971
• "Bela Lugosi's White Christmas", 1972
• "Colonel Mint", 1972
• "Gala", 1976
• "The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg", 1980
• "Rat Man of Paris", 1986
• "The Place in Flowers, Where Pollen Rests", 1988
• "Lord Byron's Doctor", 1989
• "The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper", 1991
• "Love's Mansion", 1992
• "Sporting with Amaryllis", 1996

Short Fiction:

• "The Universe and Other Fictions", 1988

Poetry:

• "Poems", 1952
• "The Spellbound Horses", 1960
• "The Snow Leopard", 1964
• "Alphabet Poetry"

Nonfiction:

• "The Growth of the Novel", 1959
• "Byron and the Spoiler's Art", 1960 – 2nd ed. 1992
• "I, Said the Sparrow", 1963
• "The Modern Novel", 1963
• "Robert Penn Warren", 1964
• "The Wine of Absurdity: Essays in Literature and Consolation", 1966
• "Words for a Deaf Daughter", 1969
• "Out of My Depths: A Swimmer in the Universe", 1983
• "Sheer Fiction", 1987
• "Portable People", 1990
• "Sheer Fiction, vol. 2", 1991
• "Sheer Fiction, vol. 3", 1994
• "A Stroke of Genius: Illness and Self-Discovery", 1995
• "The Shadow Factory", 2008

Edited Text:

• "Byron: Twentieth Century Views", 1963

External links

* [http://www.centerforbookculture.org/interviews/interview_west.html "An Interview With Paul West", David W. Madden. A 1989 interview]
* [http://www.answers.com/topic/paul-west Brief biography from Answers.com]
* [http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su07/mem-west.html 'Mem, Mem, Mem'] After a stroke, West struggles to say how the mental world of aphasia looks and feels. According to his wife Diane Ackerman: cquote| this is an excerpt from "The Shadow Factory", the aphasic memoir West dictated with such struggle and resolve, “forcing language back on itself.”

Further reading

David W. Madden, "Understanding Paul West", ISBN 0-87249-886-7 [http://sc.edu/uscpress/1993older/9886.html]
Cycolopedia of World Authors, 3rd Ed. Vol. 5, Sim-Z. "Paul West". pp 2137-2138.