Robert Stone Has Died........He Was America's Greatest Living Novelist. Now He Is Gone

Robert Stone the author of DOG SOLDIERS has died. He won a National Book Award for fiction for that book. He was the best living American novelist and now he is gone. I think maybe he will be the last serious American novelist of any merit. All the best sellers like Stephen King and John Grisham and all the other best sellers are just writing popular fiction that is only for children of all ages. It is not serious first class writing.
Now we have no more Steinbecks or Faulkners of Hemingways or Bellows or Fitzgeralds. Or Hawthornes or Melvilles for that matter. All we have are writers like Tom Clancy who doesn"t even write the books that are now coming out under his name. Since he is dead. They are now written by somebody else whose name appears under his. How cheap a shot is that?
My favorite Robert Stone books are HALL OF MIRRORS, DOG SOLDIERS, DEATH OF THE BLACK HAIRED GIRL and also his short story collections Fun with Problems, Bear and his Daughter.
And his non fiction memoir PRIME GREEN.
I have posted many other posts on this blog about Robert Stone. You can find them by clicking on the Label Robert Stone in the Label Box below.
Also you will find many pictures of him there that are more flattering than the rotten picture the Washington Post chose to run with his obituary. I think they wanted to show him as a burnt out hippie author.

Robert Stone, the National Book Award-winning novelist, is shown here in 1981. (Photo by Bob Laramie/AP for The Washington Post)


 When I met him at book signing here in Washington D.C. in 2007 he looked like a businessman. He was in his prime. Sharp clothes and new shoes. Look on my past posts under the Label Robert Stone for picture of me getting books signed by him at Politics And Prose bookstore. You will see that he was looking very good and could have been mistaken for a banker.
Click on the Label Robert Stone in the Label Box below and keep scrolling down until you come to the post about Robert Stone At Politics And Prose.

Here are the pictures mentioned above.

Click on thes pictures to enlarge them.

Now click on the name Robert Stone in the Labels box below to read many more of my previous posts about Robert Stone.  Included in them are several videos of him reading and being interviewed via You Tube.