- William Goyen
Charles William Goyen (
April 24 1915 –August 30 1983 ) was an American author, editor, and teacher.He was born in
Trinity, Texas , and at the age of eight he moved with his family to Houston. Later, after teaching for one year at theUniversity of Houston , he left to serve in theU.S. Navy duringWorld War II .Returning to the U.S. after five years, he left Houston to pursue his work as a writer. Since childhood, he had felt that he had a gift of telling stories, and he pursued his writing dreams. Though never achieving great fame, Goyen's writing was admired for its spirit and flowing, oratorial style.
He died of
leukemia in 1983, aged 68 shortly after the completion of his last novel. He was survived by his wife, actressDoris Roberts .Works
* "The House of Breath" (1950)
* "Ghost and Flesh" (1952)
* "In a Farther Country" (1955)
* "The Fair Sister" (1963)
* "Come the Restorer" (1974)
* "Collected Stories" (1975)
* "Wonderful Plant" (1980)
* "Arcadio" (1983)Quotes
"I don’t feel that there is any (spirit) in most contemporary writers I’ve read, they are too busy with repeating themselves, and their own success…But I’m not looking for disciples, I don’t think anyone should write like me."
"The natural world has such a secret power for me, it is such a source of strength and affirmation. . . . But then there are human beings, too, and they, too, are beautiful and treacherous and full of such mystery. God knows we need someone to tell us the human is beautiful these days, and we need to hear over and over again that even in our ugliness we must be loved into something more than ourselves and more than ugliness. My side is on the side of the human being, and the human being moving in nature, which is spirit; and nothing else seems important to me, and if I thought I could not spend my life laboring to perceive and to understand and to clarify what happens to us in the world, then I would want to die." - Selected Letters, 114-115
External links
* [http://www.theparisreview.com/viewinterview.php/prmMID/3637 "The Paris Review" interview]
* [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/gibbons.html William Goyen Collection] at theHarry Ransom Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
