Рекс Стаут (1886-1975)

Рекс Стаут (1886-1975) родился в Ноублесвилле, штат Индиана. Через несколько лет семья переехала в Канзас и поселилась в Викарусе, где Рекс, шестой из девяти братьев и сестер, пошел в школу. Вундеркиндом он не был, зато порадовал родителей победой в конкурсе по правописанию и арифметике, проводившемся в их штате. Будучи молодым человеком, он разработал программу накопления банковских сбережений для школьников, которую приняли на ура в четырехстах американских городах, и она принесла автору четыреста тысяч долларов. В 1906 году Рекс Стаут бросил учебу в университете Канзаса, поступил на флот юнгой и прослужил два года на президентской яхте "Мейфлауэр".

После этого он сменил множество самых разных профессий.

Конюх, продавец в книжном магазине, менеджер отеля, гид по индейским пуэбло в Санта-Фе, торговец сигарами в Кливленде - это далеко не полный список достижений будущего писателя. Маловероятно, что такая обширная сфера интересов Рекса Стаута была связана с желанием накопить жизненный опыт, который мог бы ему потребоваться для создания вымышленных миров и персонажей. Скорее любовь к общению и азартное стремление испытать себя толкали его к переменам.

В 1927 году Рекс Стаут делает первый шаг на пути к писательской славе: как многие начинающие беллетристы, он переезжает в Париж. Критики довольно благосклонно отнеслись к молодому писателю, однако признание читателей пришло к нему только спустя несколько лет. Диапазон тем, занимавших Стаута в то время, как, впрочем, и на протяжении всей его карьеры рассказчика, был так же широк, как и круг его бытовых интересов. Он пробовал свои силы в самых разных жанрах - от традиционного романа до научной фантастики, но основная масса его произведений - детективы. Именно они принесли Стауту шумный успех, были переведены на 25 языков, издавались и продолжают издаваться огромными тиражами.

Творчество Стаута в жанре детектива также отличается разнообразием, включая как отдельные произведения, так и серии романов, а также рассказы. Каждому из них присущи свои достоинства, но ничто не выдерживает сравнения с эпопеей Ниро Вульфа и Арчи Гудвина.

Рекс Стаут впервые вывел своих героев на сцену в 1934 году.

С появлением романа "Фер-де-ланс" ("Острие копья") армия поклонников его таланта заметно увеличилась, и по мере того как экстравагантный сыщик со своим остроумным помощником шествовали по страницам детективного сериала из романа в роман, число почитателей их создателя росло.

Эпопея Ниро Вульфа и Арчи Гудвина родилась в 30-е годы, когда классическим сыщикам-интеллектуалам пришлось немного потесниться, уступая место крепким ребятам, которые самой лучшей компанией для себя считали кольт 38-го калибра и пару длинноногих блондинок, на каждой странице наливали виски на два пальца и общались с самыми опасными преступниками на простом и вполне понятном читателю языке, не выпуская при этом сигару из зубов. Начиналась эра остросюжетного детектива. Рекс Стаут, будучи до мозга костей человеком своего сумасшедшего времени и не желая отказываться от своей давней любви к персонажам Артура Конан Дойла, соединил в своем творчестве два детективных канона, дав классическому, хоть и немного гротескному, сыщику Ниро Вульфу помощника, созданного по образу и подобию героев криминального чтива. Этим и объясняется успех четырех десятков романов, в которых фигурируют два героя-антипода, вместе способные покорить любую аудиторию.

Стаут обладает чудесным даром создавать реалистичных персонажей и заинтересовывать читателей их жизнью. Ниро Вульф и Арчи не одиноки - их окружают друзья и враги, люди, нуждающиеся в их помощи, и те, кто с удовольствием убрал бы с дороги двух не в меру сообразительных частных детективов.

Собственно, диалоги всех этих персонажей, забавные комментарии Арчи Гудвина, от имени которого ведется рассказ, язвительные замечания и мудрые сентенции Ниро Вульфа и создают ту атмосферу романов Рекса Стаута, которая заставляет снова и снова возвращаться к знакомым героям и с увлечением следить за их похождениями.

Прочитать произведения Рекса Стаута можно , пройдя по ссылке http://lib.aldebaran.ru/author/staut_reks/.

Rex Stout (1886-1975)

 He received early encouragement in reading from his mother and his teacher father, and had read all 1,126 books in his father's library by the time he was eleven. He went on to become the state's spelling champion at the age of thirteen. 

  One of nine children, Stout was prevented from entering the University of Kansas due to his family's lack of money. He joined the U.S. Navy at the age of eighteen and served as a yeoman on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht for nearly two years. Some of his poems were published in Smart Set magazine, and he supported himself in a variety of jobs for four years after leaving the navy. For a time he returned to writing, publishing four serialized adventure novels in All-Story Magazine from 1913 to 1916, as well as more than thirty short stories in other magazines. Always a rapid calculator and bookkeeper, he achieved early success by founding the Educational Thrift Service with his brother Bob. Earnings from the school banking system enabled him to travel extensively in Europe with his first wife, Fay. 

 Stout returned to writing full time in 1927, leaving his job as president of Vanguard Press, a company he had helped found. In 1929 Vanguard published the first Stout novel to appear in book form, How Like a God. Though not usually listed with his crime and detective novels, the book contains a fair amount of suspense and culminates in a murder. 

 Stout's personal life changed in 1932 with his divorce from his first wife and marriage to Pola Hoffman. He was publishing literary and romance novels at this time, but he still remembered the hundreds of detective stories he'd read since his boyhood. In October 1933, the same month his daughter was born, he created Wolfe and Goodwin, and began work on the first Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance. Nero Wolfe, weighing in at some 270 pounds, was a gourmet who loved orchids and beer. (His first recorded sentence, on the second page of Fer-de-Lance, is, “Where's the beer?”) Like his creator he held firm, mainly liberal views on a variety of subjects. He rarely left his brownstone on New York's West 35th Street. In short, he was something new in American detective fiction. His relationship with confidential assistant Goodwin, with its interplay of clever conversation and flashes of wit, was the most successful pairing since Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson, and often compensated for some lapses in the plotting of later books.

 

 There can be little doubt that four of the first six Wolfe novels are among the best of the series. Fer-de-Lance (1934; Meet Nero Wolfe), with its deadly golf club and titular serpent, set the stage for all that followed. The character of Wolfe had mellowed a bit by the second book, The League of Frightened Men (1935), but its plot remains one of the strongest in the series. In the fifth and sixth books, Too Many Cooks and Some Buried Caesar (both 1938; The Red Bull), Wolfe makes two of his rare ventures outside New York City.

 After 1941 Stout abandoned most of his other detective characters such as Tecumseh Fox and Alphabet Hicks to concentrate on Wolfe, turning out a total of thirty-three novels and forty-one novellas about the rotund sleuth. Following the early high spots in the saga, Wolfe probably hit his peak with the Zeck trilogy consisting of And Be a Villain (1948; More Deaths Than One), The Second Confession (1949), and In the Best Families (1950; Even in the Best Families). Each of the novels is complete and clever in itself, and together they tell of Wolfe's duel of wits with master criminal Arnold Zeck, a man so powerful he finally drives Wolfe out of his home and into hiding. 

 Late in the series, Stout continued to communicate his social concerns. A Right to Die (1964) deals with the civil rights movement, while Wolfe battles the abuses of J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I. in The Doorbell Rang (1965). The final Wolfe novel, A Family Affair (1975), was published shortly before Stout's death. Despite some plot weakness it is a fitting conclusion to the saga, dealing as it does with those closest to the master sleuth.

  http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/7001/Rex-(Todhunter)-Stout.html

Selected works:

HER FORBIDDEN KNIGHT, in All-Story Magazine, 1913

UNDER THE ANDES, 1914

A PRIZE FOR THE PRINCES, 1914

THE GREAT LEGEND, 1916

HOW LIKE A GOD, 1929

SEED ON THE WIND, 1930

GOLDEN REMEDY, 1931

FOREST FIRE, 1933

FER-DER-LANCE, 1934

THE PRESIDENT VANISHES, 1934

O CARELESS LOVE! 1935

A QUESTION OF PROOF, 1935

THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN, 1935

THE RUBBER BAND, 1936

THE RED BOX, 1937

THE HAND IN THE GLOVE, 1937

MR. CINDERELLA, 1938

TOO MANY COOKS, 1938

MOUNTAIN CAT, 1939

DOUBLE FOR DEATH, 1939

RED THREADS, 1939

SOME BURIED CAESAR, 1939

BAD FOR BUSINESS, 1940

OVER MY DEAD BODY, 1940

WHERE THERE'S A WILL, 1940

BLACK ORCHIDS, 1944

NOT QUITE DEAD ENOUGH, 1944

THE SILENT SPEAKER, 1946

TOO MANY WOMEN, 1947

AND BE A VILLAIN, 1948

TROUBLE IN TRIPLICATE, 1949

THE SECOND CONFESSION, 1949

THREE DOORS TO DEATH, 1950

IN THE BEST FAMILIES, 1950

MURDER BY THE BOOK, 1951

CURTAINS FOR THREE, 1951

PRISONER'S BASE, 1952

TRIPLE JEOPARDY, 1952

THE GOLDEN SPIDERS, 1953

THE BLACK MOUNTAIN, 1954

THREE MEN OUT, 1954

BEFORE MIDNIGHT, 1955

MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD, 1956

THREE WITNESSES, 1956

THREE FOR THE CHAIR, 1957

IF DEATH EVER SLEPT, 1957

CHAMPAGNE FOR ONE, 1959

PLOT IT YOURSELF, 1959

THREE AT WOLFE'S DOOR, 1960

TOO MANY CLIENTS, 1960

THE FINAL DEDUCTION, 1961

HOMICIDE TRINITY, 1962

GAMBIT, 1962

THE MOTHER HUNT, 1963

THE DOORBEL RANG, 1963

A RIGHT TO DIE, 1964

TRIO FOR BLUNT INSTRUMENTS, 1964

DEATH OF A DOXY, 1966

THE FATHER HUNT, 1968

DEATH OF A DUDE, 1969

PLEASE PASS THE GUILT, 1973

A FAMILY AFFAIR, 1975

Here there be tygers (with English subtitles)

All Summer In A Day

The Dragon (Ray Bradbury)

The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury (animated)

An Evening with Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920.

He was the third son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury. They gave him the middle name "Douglas," after the actor, Douglas Fairbanks.

He never lived up to his namesake's reputation for swashbuckling adventure on the high seas. Instead, Bradbury's great adventures would take place behind a typewriter, in the realm of imagination. Today, as an author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, lecturer, poet and visionary, Ray Bradbury is known as one of America's greatest creative geniuses. 

Bradbury's early childhood in Waukegan was characterized by his loving extended family. These formative years provided the foundations for both the author and his stories.

In Bradbury's works of fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes "Greentown," Illinois. Greentown is a symbol of safety and home, and often provides a contrasting backdrop to tales of fantasy or menace. In Greentown, Bradbury's favorite uncle sprouts wings, traveling carnivals conceal supernatural powers, and his grandparents provide room and board to Charles Dickens.  

Between 1926 and 1933, the Bradbury family moved back and forth between Waukegan and Tucson, Arizona. In 1931, young Ray began writing his own stories on butcher paper.  

In 1934, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles, California. As a teenager, Bradbury often roller-skated through Hollywood, trying to spot celebrities. He befriended other talented and creative people, like special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns.  

In fact, it was Burns who gave Bradbury his first pay as a writer -- for contributing a joke to the Burns & Allen Show.

Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School. He was active in the drama club and planned to become an actor. 

However, two of his teachers recognized a greater talent in Bradbury, and encouraged his development as a writer. Snow Longley Housh taught him about poetry and Jeannet Johnson taught him to write short stories. Over 60 years later, Bradbury's work bears the indelible impressions left by these two women. 

As his high school years progressed, Bradbury grew serious about becoming a writer. Outside of class, he contributed to fan publications and joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League. At school, he improved his grades and joined the Poetry Club.

Bradbury's formal education ended with his high school graduation in 1938. However, he continued to educate himself. He sold newspapers on Los Angeles street corners all day, but spent his nights in the library. The hours between newspaper editions were spent at his typewriter.  

His first published short story was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma," printed in 1938 in Imagination!, an amateur fan magazine. In 1939, Bradbury published four issues of his own fan magazine, Futuria Fantasia, writing much of the content himself. His first paid publication, a short story titled "Pendulum," appeared in Super Science Stories in 1941.  

As he honed his writing skills, Bradbury often looked to established writers for guidance. During those early years, his mentors included Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Robert Heinlein and Henry Hasse. 

At last, in 1942, Bradbury wrote "The Lake" -- the story in which he discovered his distinctive writing style. The following year, he gave up selling newspapers and began to write full-time. In 1945 his short story "The Big Black and White Game" was selected for Best American Short Stories. That same year, Bradbury traveled through Mexico to collect Indian masks for the Los Angeles County Museum. 

In 1946, he met his future wife, Marguerite "Maggie" McClure. A graduate of George Washington High School (1941) and UCLA, Maggie was working as a clerk in a book shop when they met. 

Ray and Maggie were married in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Episcopal in Los Angeles on September 27, 1947. Ray Harryhausen served as the best man.

That same year also marked the publication of Bradbury's first collection of short stories, entitled Dark Carnival.  

The first of the Bradbury's four daughters, Susan, was born in 1949. Susan's sisters, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra were born in 1951, 1955 and 1958, respectively. 

Bradbury's reputation as a leading science fiction writer was finally established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950. The book describes man's attempt to colonize Mars, the effects of colonization on the Martians, and the colonists' reaction to a massive nuclear war on Earth.  

As much a work of social criticism as of science fiction, The Martian Chronicles reflects America's anxieties in the early 1950's: the threat of nuclear war, the longing for a simpler life, reactions against racism and censorship, and the fear of foreign political powers.

Another of Bradbury's best-known works, Fahrenheit 451, was released in 1953. It is set in a future in which a totalitarian government has banned the written word. Montag enjoys his job as a professional book-burner. But he begins to question his duties the when he learns of a time when books were legal and people did not live in fear. Montag begins stealing books marked for destruction and meets a professor who agrees to educate him. When his pilfering is discovered, he must run for his life.

Bradbury's work has won innumerable honors and awards, including the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award (1954), the Aviation-Space Writer's Association Award for Best Space Article in an American Magazine (1967), the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. His work was also included in the Best American Short Stories collections for 1946, 1948 and 1952.

Perhaps Bradbury's most unusual honor came from the Apollo astronaut who named Dandelion Crater after Bradbury's novel, Dandelion Wine.

Bradbury's lifetime love of cinema fuelled his involvement in many Hollywood productions, including The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a version of his story, "The Fog Horn"), Something Wicked This Way Comes (based on his novel,) and director John Huston's version of Moby Dick. His animated film about the history of flight, Icarus Montgolfier Wright, was nominated for an academy award

Over the decades, there have also been many attempts to adapt Bradbury's stories for television. Commendable examples include episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and Bradbury's Emmy-winning teleplay for The Halloween Tree.

But not all adaptations were so successful. For instance, Bradbury was seriously disappointed with a Martian Chronicles network miniseries, broadcast in 1979.

Looking for more creative control, Bradbury turned to the relative freedom of cable television and developed his own series. Ray Bradbury Theater ran from 1986 until 1992 and allowed the author to produce televised versions of his own stories.

Even while working on TV series, novels, short stories, screenplays and radio dramas, Bradbury continues to publish collections of his plays, poems and essays. 

What does he do for an encore, you ask?

Beyond his literary contributions, Bradbury also serves as an "idea consultant" for various civic, educational and entertainment projects. He provided the concept and script for the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair and contributed to Disney's Spaceship Earth at EPCOT and the Orbitron at the Disneyland parks in Paris and Anaheim.

As a creative consultant to the Jon Jerde Partnership, he also helped create trend-setting shopping/entertainment plazas, including the Glendale Galleria in Los Angeles and Horton Plaza in San Diego. These innovative malls (and their many imitators) reflect Bradbury's vision of a "small-town plaza" tailored to the urban environment.

Today, Ray and Maggie Bradbury continue to live in Los Angeles. They have eight grandchildren and four cats. 

Ray Bradbury still writes daily and occasionally lectures. At an age when most men rest on their laurels, Bradbury remains a dynamic storyteller and contributor of "obvious answers to impossible futures."

http://www.spaceagecity.com/bradbury/bio.htm

BOOKS BY RAY BRADBURY

(chronological order/US publications)
(includes story collections, novels, verse, plays)

1. 1947 DARK CARNIVAL

2. 1950 THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES

3. 1951 THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

4. 1953 THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN

5. 1953 FAHRENHEIT 451

6. 1955 SWITCH ON THE NIGHT

7. 1955 THE OCTOBER COUNTRY

8. 1957 DANDELION WINE

9. 1959 A MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY (published in the UK as THE DAY IT RAINED FOREVER)

10. 1962 SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

11. 1962 R IS FOR ROCKET

12. 1963 THE ANTHEM SPRINTERS AND OTHER ANTICS

13. 1964 THE MACHINERIES OF JOY

14. 1965 THE VINTAGE BRADBURY

15. 1966 TWICE 22

16. 1966 S IS FOR SPACE

17. 1969 I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!

18. 1972 THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT AND OTHER PLAYS

19. 1972 THE HALLOWEEN TREE

20. 1973 WHEN ELEPHANTS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED

21. 1975 PILLAR OF FIRE AND OTHER PLAYS

22. 1976 LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT

23. 1977 WHERE ROBOT MICE AND ROBOT MEN RUN ROUND IN ROBOT TOWNS

24. 1978 THE MUMMIES OF GUANAJUATO

25. 1979 THIS ATTIC WHERE THE MEADOW GREENS

26. 1980 THE LAST CIRCUS & THE ELECTROCUTION

27. 1980 THE STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY

28. 1981 THE GHOSTS OF FOREVER (first published in 1980 in Argentina)

29. 1981 THE HAUNTED COMPUTER AND THE ANDROID POPE

30. 1982 THE COMPLETE POEMS OF RAY BRADBURY

31. 1982 THE LOVE AFFAIR

32. 1983 DINOSAUR TALES

33. 1984 A MEMORY OF MURDER

34. 1984 DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS

35. 1987 DEATH HAS LOST ITS CHARM FOR ME

36. 1987 RAY BRADBURY

37. 1987 FEVER DREAM

38. 1988 THE TOYNBEE CONVECTOR

39. 1989 THE CLIMATE OF PALETTES

40. 1989 ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING

41. 1990 A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS

42. 1991 RAY BRADBURY ON STAGE

43. 1991 YESTERMORROW

44. 1992 GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALE

45. 1996 QUICKER THAN THE EYE

46. 1997 DRIVING BLIND

47. 1997 WITH CAT FOR COMFORTER

48. 1997 DOGS THINK THAT EVERY DAY IS CHRISTMAS

49. 1998 AHMED AND THE OBLIVION MACHINES

50. 2001 A CHAPBOOK FOR BURNT-OUT PRIESTS, RABBIS AND MINISTERS

51. 2001 FROM THE DUST RETURNED

52. 2002 ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD

53. 2003 BRADBURY STORIES

54. 2004 LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE

55. 2004 THE CAT'S PAJAMAS

56. 2005 BRADBURY SPEAKS

57. 2006 THE HOMECOMING

58. 2006 FAREWELL SUMMER

59. 2007 NOW AND FOREVER

http://www.raybradbury.com/chrono.html

Isaac Asimov

DREAMCATCHER part 13 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 12 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 11 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 10 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 9 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 8 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 7 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 6 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 5 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 4 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 3 of 13

DREAMCATCHER part 2 of 13

DREAMCATCHER (2003) part 1 of 13

The green mile 21/21

The green mile 20/21

The green mile 19/21

The green mile 18/21

The green mile 17/21

The green mile 16/21

The green mile 15/21

The green mile 14/21

The green mile 13/21

The green mile 12/21

The green mile 11/21

The green mile 10/21

The green mile 9/21

The green mile 8/21

The green mile 7/21

The green mile 6/21

The green mile 5/21

The green mile 4/21

The green mile 3/21

The green mile 2/21

The green mile 1/21 (1999)

Stephen King's IT - Part 18 - The End

Stephen King's IT - Part 17

Stephen King's IT - Part 16

Stephen King's IT - Part 15

Stephen King's IT - Part 14

Stephen King's IT - Part 13

Stephen King's IT - Part 12

Stephen King's IT - Part 11

Stephen King's IT - Part 10

Stephen King's IT - Part 9

Stephen King's IT - Part 8

Stephen King's IT - Part 7

Stephen King's IT - Part 6

Stephen King's IT - Part 5

Stephen King's IT - Part 4

Stephen King's IT - Part 3

Stephen King's IT - Part 2

Stephen King's IT - Part 1

Stephen King (1947-)

Read about the writer in Russian at http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кинг,_Стивен_Эдвин 

American novelist and short-story writer, whose enormously popular books revived the interest in horror fiction from the 1970s. King's place in the modern horror fiction can be compared to that of J.R.R. Tolkien's who created the modern genre of fantasy. Like Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens or Balzac in his La Comédie humaine, King has expressed the fundamental concerns of his era, and used the horror genre as his own branch of artistic expression. King has underlined, that even in the world of cynicism, despair, and cruelties, it remains possible for individuals to find love and discover unexpected resources in themselves. His characters often conquer their own problems and malevolent powers that would suppress or destroy them.

"I wish I could get away from horror for a while, and I do - or I think I do, and then suddenly I discover that I'm like the guy in the poem by Auden who runs and runs and finally ends up in a cheap, one-night hotel. He goes down a hallway and opens a door, and there he meets himself sitting under a naked light bulb, writing." (King in Faces of Fear by Douglas E. Winter, 1990)

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine. His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family in 1950. The young Stephen and his brother David were raised in Durham, Maine, by their mother who worked in odd jobs to support her children. At the age of six, he had his eardrum punctured several times - a painful experience which he never forgot. King attended a grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High school, where he started to write short stories and played in an amateur rock band. In 1960 he submitted his first story for publication - it was rejected. He edited the school newspaper, The Drum, and also wrote for the local newspaper, Lisbon Weekly Enterprise. His first story, entitled 'In a Half-World of Terror', King published in a horror fanzine. In 1970 King graduated from the University of Maine. Next year he married Tabitha Spruce, who has also gained fame as a writer. "My wife is the person in my life who's most likely to say I'm working too hard, it's time to slow down, stay away from that damn PowerBook for a little while, Steve, give it a rest." (from On Writing, 2000) Most of his career King has lived in Bangor, Maine. Many of his books are set in the imaginary town of Castle Rock, Maine, which is totally destroyed by greed in Needful Things (1993).

From 1971 to 1974 King was an instructor at the Hampden Academy, earning $6,400 a year. His first novel, Carrie (1974), was a tale of a girl with telekinetic powers. King had thrown the first pages of the story in a garbage pail, but his wife rescued them and urged him to finish the work. Carrie had first only a moderate success and sold 13 000 copies in hardcover. However, Signet paid $400,000 for its paperback rights. Carrie's film version was launched in 1976 and after the breakthrough novel Salem's Lot (1976), King established quickly his reputation as a major horror writer. In the late summer of 1974 King moved with his family to Colorado for an extended holiday. He visited the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, and set there his next novel, The Shining. Stanley Kubrick's film version of the book, from 1977, did not satisfy the author, and he King himself turned his novel into a television miniseries in 1997.

In the late 1970s King published his first paperbacks under the name of Richard Bachman. The Talisman (1984) and its sequel, The Black House (2001), were written with Peter Staub. King has also published non-fiction. In his collection of essays, Danse Macabre (1981), King described the writing process as a kind of "dance" in which the author searches out the private fears of each reader. In the textbook of macabre he goes through the horror genre, from film monsters to books, focusing mostly on the post-war era. "It's not a dance of death at all, not really. There is a third lever here, as well. It is, at bottom, a dance of dreams. It's a way of awakening the child inside, who never dies but only sleeps ever more deeply. If the horror story is rehearsal for death, then its strict moralities make it also a reaffirmation of life and good will and simple imagination - just one more pipeline to the infinite." (from Dance Macabre)

After writing The Pet Sematary King considered he don't need to publish his "thebmost wretched, awful thing" he made, Bag of Bones (1998). The story dealt with the grief process in an uncompromising way. In Bag of Bones King returned to the theme of loss of a family member, and added into it the classical haunted house idea and familiar elements from his previous works: a small town where people know more than they tell, the collective guilty, and a hero who can't avoid confrontation with the evil powers. Old crimes, sins and secrets, hidden deep, are gradually revealed in an analysis of the conscious and unconscious like on a Freud's sofa. Playing with fire, King plunges into the mind of Mike Noonan, an author who suffers from the writer's block. Noonan's wife has died unexpectedly and he retreats to Sara Laughs, their happy home during summers. There he meets a young mother, Mattie, and her daughter, whom he helps in an custody struggle. - Mattie is one of the liveliest characters in King's works. Her sudden death, a logical twist of the plot, comes like electric shock. In the last pages of the novel Noonan/King returns to it and states correctly that 'to think I might have written such a hellishly convenient death in a book, ever, sickens me.' Bag of Bones continues the series where King explorers the writing process and the work of an author. The Shining, Misery, The Dark Half and now Bag of Bones are among his most revealing and personal works. - King is not among those writers who claim that they don't have time to read. Bag of Bones offers a delightful analysis of Herman Melville's story Bartleby, and comments about books and authors. Among them is Thomas Hardy, who stopped writing novels at the peak of his career and changed into poetry. Hardy supposedly said, that the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.

A number of King's stories have been adapted into screen, among others Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1995), and The Green Mile (1999). His novels are richly textured with multitudinous references to films, television, rock music, literature, popular culture, and in his own books. Several of early King's novels explored the agonies of childhood, parental neglect and abuse (Carrie; Firestarter, 1980). In the 1980s his perspective shifted into the various pains of adulthood, the loneliness of older people (It, 1986; Insomnia, 1994). He has also provided fully-realized women characters in such novels as Gerald's Game (1992), Dolores Clairborne (1993), and Rose Madder (1995).
'"Michela reads all your books," the fat woman said. "Where in the world do you get all those crazy ideas?"
"I don't know," Kinnell said, smiling more widely than ever. "They just come to me. Isn't that amazing?"'
(from 'The Road Virus Heads North', 1999)

King's Dark Tower series, which started in 1982 with The Gunslinger, has combined Tolkien's sense of wonder with a horror and Sergio-Leone influenced Western. Partly the novel is based on Robert Browning's narrative poem, 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'. The world of Roland has many intertextual relationships with King's other books and maps the boundaries of his imagination or universe. Occasionally characters cross over from one genre to another, from fantasy to realism. Roland and his friends, other gunslingers, are helped by the Old Fella, Father Callahan from Salem's Lot.

King confesses in On Writing that he had problems with alcohol as early as in 1975, when he wrote The Shining, and he also developed in the 1980s a drung addiction. In June 1999 King was struck by a van and seriously injured. Soon after the accident, in July, King began publishing a serial novel, entitled The Plant, at his website, stephenking.com. In the story a supernatural vine starts to grow in a paperback publishing house. It brings success and riches and all it wants in return is a little drop of blood, a little flesh. King also announced that he will not continue with the story if payments for downloading the work fall off. "What made The Plant such a hilarious Internet natural (at least to my admittedly twisted mind) was that publishers and media people seem to see exactly this sort of monster whenever they contemplate the Net in general and e-lit in particular: a troublesome strangler fig that just might have a bit o' the old profit in it. If, that is, it's handled with gloves." (King in Time, January 8, 2001)

While convalescing from the accident, King returned to his early career as a writer in On Writing (2000), but most of all, the book gives down-to-earth advises for aspiring writers. "Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do." In February 2002 King revealed to the Los Angeles Times that he has decided to stop publishing at year's end after finishing the last three novels in his "Dark Tower" series, and some other works. In 2003 King received the National Book Award. Its previous recipients include John Updike, Arthur Miller, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. From Lisey's Story (2006) onwards, King's stories seems to have taken a new turn, in which the horror is not only a genre manifestation but the feelings of angst and fear are a definition of the whole human existence.

From the beginning of his career, King has examined the demons that are hidden behind the work of an author. In Misery a monstrous muse forces the writer into a slavery in front of typewriter. The writer is addicted to his work, but at the same time he is haunted by the demands of his fans. Although King is respected as a major force in popular fiction, his books blend the line between high art and pulp culture. In The Shining the writer, Jack Torrance, a former alcoholic, attacks his own family, and in The Dark Half (1898) he must fight against the demon of his own imagination. This self-conscious way to approach the art of fiction is also seen in King's controlled use of images that are meant to scare the reader. In Hearts in Atlantis (1999) typical horror elements are reduced as a metaphor of lost innocence. In the story King pointedly refers to William Golding's modern classic, Lord of the Flies.
For further reading: Stephen King: The Fist Decade by Jospeh Reino (1988); The Stephen King Companion, ed. George W. Beahm (1989); Stephen King: Man and Artits by Carroll F. Terrell (1990); The Shape Under the Sheet: The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia (1991); Stephen King: The Second Decade by Tony Magistrale (1992); The Films of Stephen King by Ann Lloyd (1993); Stephen King's America by Jonathan P. Davis (1994); The Work of Stephen King: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide by Michael R. Collings (1996); Stephen King: A Critical Companion by Sharon A. Russell (1996); Speaking of Murder, ed. by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg (1998)
Other famous modern horror writers: Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, John Farris, Stephen Gallagher, James Herbert, Peter James, Dean R. Koontz, Richard Laymon, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, Robert McCammon, Anne Rice, John Saul, Peter Straub, Whitley Strieber. - What is horror: "The main criterion is that it should be both frightening and repulsive, with elements of horror, fantasy and the supernatural", from Now Read On... by Mandy Hicken and Ray Prytherch (1994). See also: Clive Barker's A-Z of Horror (1997); The Penquin Encyclopædie of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) - Suomennoksia: Kingiltä on käännetty säännönmukaisesti uudet romaanit, samoin kuin novelleja kuten Skeleton Crew -kokoelman tarinoita ja pienoisromaaneja teoksissa Ennen aamunkoittoa, Jälkeen keskiyön. Osia Differen Seasons - teoksen teksteistä on ilmestynyt pokkareissa Rita Haywort - avain pakoon sekä Kauhun vuodenajat 1-2. - Vuonna 1996 ilmestyi nuorten kirjoittajien novellikokoelma Vanhoja luita ja muita epätodellisia tarinoita (toim. Petri Liukkonen ja Tanja Keskisimonen), joka on omistettu Stephen Kingille. Kirjailijan tuotantoa esittelevistä teoksista mainittakoon Paljaat luut (1991). - Several film adaptations from short stories and novellas: Cat's Eye, 1984 (from 'Quitters, Inc,' 'The Ledge,' and 'The General'; Maximum Overdrive, 1986 (from 'The Mangler,' and 'The Lawnmower Man'); Stand by Me, 1986 (from the novella 'The Boby'); The Lawnmover Man, 1993; Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, 1990 ('The Cat from Hell'); Stephen King's Graveyard Shift, 1990; Stephen King's "Sometimes They Come Back", 1991 (television movie); Stephen King's Golden Years, 1991 (television miniseries); Creepshow 2, 1987

Selected works:
CARRIE, 1974 - Carrie (suom. Tuula Saarikoski) - film 1976, dir. by Brian De Palma, starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie
SALEM'S LOT, 1975 - Painajainen (suom. Heikki Karjalainen) - See also Nathaniel Hawthorne, who grew up in Salem and in Raymond, Maine, and whose tale Young Goodman Brown (1835) is among the greatest witchcraft stories - tv miniseries in 1979
THE SHINING, 1975 - Hohto (suom. Pentti Isomursu) - film 1980, dir. by Stanley Kubrick starring Jack Nicholson, Danny Lloyd, Shelley Duvall. - "While the novel depicts Jack and Wendy as victims of dysfunctional family situation, Kubrick satirically views them as part of a culture of grotesque comic-strip banality. Far from achieving his dream of becoming the Great American Writer of his era (rather than the playwright of the original novel), Jack becomes a dehumanized "Big Bad Wolf" or Roadrunner (with axe rather that roque mallet), pursuing Danny as Wile E. Coyote and attempting to break down the family bathroom door while voicing banalities from American television - "Here's Johnny"!" (from Novels into Film by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, 1997) - Stephen King's The Shining, television film 1997
RAGE, 1977 (as Richard Bachman) - Raivo (suom. Leevi Lehto)
THE STAND, 1978 - Tukikohta (suom. Kari Nenonen) - Stephen King's The Stand, television mini series 1994
NIGHT SHIFT, 1978 - Yön äänet (suom. Reijo Kalvas)
ANOTHER QUARTER MILE, 1979
THE LONG WALK, 1979 (as Richard Bachman) - Pitkä marssi (suom. Leevi Lehto)
THE DEAD ZONE, 1979 - Kosketus (Heikki Karjalainen) - film 1983, dir. by David Cronenberg , starring Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams
THE FIRESTARTER, 1980 - Tulisilmä (suom. Aarne T. K. Lahtinen) - film 1984, dir, by Mark L. Lester, starring David Keith Drew Barrymore
THE MONKEY, 1980
CUJO, 1981 - Cujo (suom. Virpi Kosonen) - film 1983, dir. by Lewis Teague, starring Dee Wallace, Danny Pintauro
ROADWORK, 1981 (as Richard Bachman) - Vimma / Juokse tai kuole (suom. Leevi Lehto)
DANCE MACABRE, 1981
THE PLANT, 1982-1985 (part I, 1982; part II, 1983; part III, 1985)
STEPHEN KING'S CREEPSHOW, 1982 (comic-strip adaptations)
THE DARK TOWER I: THE GUNSLINGER, 1982 - Musta torni (suom. Kari Salminen)
CREEPSHOW, 1982 - films from the short stories 'Father's Day,' 'Weeds,' 'The Crate, ''They're Creeping Up on You'
DIFFERENT SEASONS, 1982 - Kauhun vuodenajat 1, 2 (suom. Tapio Tamminen) ; Vuodenajat ; Rita Hayworth: avain pakoon - film The Shawshank Redemption (1994), dir. by Frank Darabont, starring Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton; film Apt Pupil (1999), based on the novella with the same title, dir. by Bryan Singer, starring Ian MvKellen, Brad Renfro - (Kauhun vuodenajat -suomennoksen ensimmäisestä osasta); Mallioppilas, sisältää myös tarinan Rita Hayworth - avain pakoon
THE RUNNING MAN, 1982 (as Richard Bachman) - Juokse tai kuole - film 1987, dir. by Paul Michael Glaser
, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSANK REDEMPTION: A STORY FROM 'DIFFERENT SEASONS', 1983
CHRISTINE, 1983 - Christine, tappajauto (suom. Pentti Isomursu) - film 1983, dir. by John Carpenter, starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell
BLACK MAGIC AND MUSIC: A NOVELISTS PERSPECTIVE ON BANGOR, 1983
PET SEMATARY, 1983 - Uinu, uinu lemmikkini (suom. Pirkko Talvio-Jaatinen) - film 1989, dir. by Mary Lambert, starring Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne - sequel Pet Sematary II (1992), dir. by Mary Lambert
CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF, 1983 - Ihmissuden vuosi (suom. Annika Erдpuro) - film Silver Bullet (1985), dir. by Daniel Attias, starring Corey Haim, Gary Busey, Megan Follows
THE THINNER, 1984 (as Richard Bachman) - Kirous - film Stephen King's Thinner (1996), dir. by Tom Holland, starring Robert Burke, Joe Mantegna, Lucinda Jenney
SILVER BULLET, 1985 (ombibus)
STEPHEN KING'S YEAR OF FEAR 1986 CALENDAR, 1985
SCELETON CREW, 1985 - Jälkeen keskiyön ; Ennen aamunkoitoa (suom. Tapio Tamminen) - film The Mist, 2007, dir. by Frank Darabont, starring Marcia Gay Harden, Thomas Jane, Laurie Holden
THE EYES OF THE DRAGON, 1985 - Lohikäärmeen silmät (suom. Tapio Tamminen)
THE BACHMAN BOOKS: FOUR EARLY NOVELS, 1986
IT, 1986 - Se (suom. Ilkka ja Pдivi Rekiaro) - television miniseries, 1990
MISERY, 1987 - Piina (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro) - FONT SIZE="2"> film 1990, dir. by Rob Reiner, starring James Caan, Cathry Bates
THE DARK TOWER II: THE DRAWING OF THE THREE, 1987 - Musta torni 2: Kolme korttia pakasta (suom. Kari Salminen)
SORRY, RIGHT NUMBER, 1987 (television play)
THE TOMMYKNOCKERS, 1987 - Kolkuttajat (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro) - television miniseries, 1993
MY PRETTY PONY, 1988
NIGHTMARES IN THE SKY, 1988 (photographs by f.Stop FitzGerald)
DOLAN'S CADILLAC, 1989
THE DARK HALF, 1989 - Pimeä puoli (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro) - film 1991, dir. by George A. Romero, starring Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan
FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT, 1990 - Sydänyö (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
STEPHEN KING'S GOLDEN YEARS, 1991 (television play)
NEEDFUL THINGS, 1991 - Tarpeellista tavaraa (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro) - film 1993
DARK TOWER III: THE WASTE LANDS, 1991 - Musta torni 3: Joutomaa (suom. Kari Salminen)
DOLORES CLAIRBORNE, 1993 - Doloreksen tunnustus (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro) - film 1995, dir. by Taylor Hackford, starring Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh
GERALD'S GAME, 1993 - Julma leikki (suom. Heikki Karjalainen)
INSOMNIA, 1994 - Uneton yö (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
STEPHEN KING'S THE STAND, 1994 (television play)
NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES, 1994 - Yksinäinen sormi: Painajaisia ja unikuvia 1 (suom. Heikki Kaskimies, Heikki Karjalainen) , Painajaisia ja unikuvia 2 (Heikki Karjalainen, Kari Kokko) - television movie The Langoliers 1995
ROSE MADDER, 1995 - Naisen raivo (suom. Heikki Karjalainen)
THE REGULATORS, 1996 (as Richard Bachman) - Teloittajat
DESPERATION, 1996 - Epätoivon kaupunki (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
THE GREEN MILE, 1997 (in six parts:The Two Dead Girls, The Mouse on the Mile, Coffey's Hands, The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix, Night Journey, Coffey on the Mile) - Kuoleman käytävä, osat Kaksi pientä tyttöä, Hiiri käytävällä, Coffeyn kädet, Delacroixin kurja loppu, Öinen matka, Kuoleman käytävä (suom. Heikki Kaskimies) - film 1999, dir. by Frank Darabont, starring Tom Hanks
THE DARK TOWER IV: WIZARD AND GLASS, 1997 - Musta torni IV: Velho (suom. Kari Salminen)
BAG OF BONES, 1998 - Kalpea aavistus (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, 1999 - Eksyneiden jumala (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, 1999 - Pedon sydän (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro) - film 2001, dir. by Scott Hicks, starring Anthony Hopkins, Hope Davis, screenplay by William Goldman
F13, 2000 (CD-Rom, includes an unpublished novella, Everything's Eventual)
RIDING THE BULLET, 2000 (published on the Internet, www.simonsays.com)
BLOOD & SMOKE, 2000 (audiocassette & CD format, written & read by Stephen King)
THE PLANT, 2000 (published in the Internet, www.stephenking.com)
ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT, 2000 - Kirjoittamisesta (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
DREAMCATCHER, 2001 - Unensieppaaja (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro) - film 2002, dir. by Lawrence Kasdan, starring Morgan Freeman, Tom Sizemore, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee
BLACK HOUSE, 2001 (with Peter Straub) - Pimeyden talo (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL, 2002 - Maantievirus matkalla pohjoiseen (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
FROM A BUICK EIGHT, 2002 - Buick 8 (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
STEPHEN KING'S ROSE RED, 2002 (television play)
THE DARK TOWER V: WOLVES OF THE CALLA, 2003 - Musta torni V: Callan sudet (suom. Kari Salminen)
THE DARK TOWER VI: SONG OF SUSANNAH, 2004 - Musta torni VI: Susannan laulu (suom. Kari Salminen)
THE DARK TOWER VII: THE DARK TOWER, 2004 - Musta torni VII: Musta torni (suom. Kari Salminen)
THE COLORADO KID, 2005
LISEY'S STORY, 2006 - Liseyn tarina (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
CELL, 2006 - Kuulolla (suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)
BLAZE, 2007 (under the name Richard Bachman)
DUMA KEY, 2008
JUST AFTER SUNSET, 2008

UNDER THE DOME, 2009

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/sking.htm

Джон Уинслоу Ирвинг (John Winslow Irving)

Джон Ирвинг (Джон Уинслоу Ирвинг / John Winslow Irving) — американский писатель, сценарист, актер родился в Экстере, Нью-Хэмпшир во время Второй Мировой Войны (2 марта 1942). В это время его отец служил в армии и находился на Тихом Океане. Когда Джону было всего два года его родители развелись, а в 1948 году его мать повторно вышла замуж, взяв фамилию Ирвинг, которую получил и Джон, превратившийся из Джона Уолласа Бланта младшего в Джона Уинслоу Ирвинга. Писатель вырос так ни разу и не встретившись со своим биологическим отцом.

Ирвинг рос замкнутым ребенком, но врожденную любовь к одиночеству он сам считает важной чертой характера, сделавшей его писателем. В детстве Джон страдал дислексией, и даже простое чтение давалось ему с большим трудом. Несмотря на это он стал запойным читателем и поступил на факультет литературоведения. Будучи учеником Philips Exeter Academy, где историю России преподавал его приемный отец, Ирвинг увлекся спортивной борьбой. Он уверен, что именно благодаря этому спорту научился дисциплине и настойчивости.

После одного года обучения Ирвинг оставил Университет Питтсбурга и переехал в столицу Австрии — Вену. Он учился в Венском Университете и объездил все Европу на мотоцикле. Полученные впечатления позже нашли свое отражение в его произведениях. После возвращения в Соединенные Штаты, Ирвинг поступил в Университет Нью-Гемпшира, который закончил в 1965 году. Он женился, когда еще был студентом, а отцом стал в 23 года. Окончательно утвердившись в решении стать писателем, Ирвинг получил грант на обучение на писательских курсах в Университете штата Айова, где среди его преподавателей был Курт Воннегут.

В 1967 году Ирвинг получил степень доктора философии. В том же году он вернулся в Новую Англию со своей выросшей семьей и получил должность ассистента кафедры английского языка в Windham College в Вермонте. Его первая книга «Свободу медведям» (в другом переводе «Выпусти медведей на волю») была опубликована, когда ему было всего 26 лет. Вдохновившись реальными событиями последних дней Второй Мировой войны, в своем романе он рассказал трагикомическую истории двоих студентов, пытающихся освободить животных из Венского зоосада. Уже в первом произведение можно найти несколько переплетенных сюжетных линий, придающих особый драматизм несчастьям, которые валятся на голову героям его книг. В последующем этот прием станет визитной карточкой Ирвинга. Несмотря на теплые отзывы критиков и даже благожелательное мнение Курта Воннегута, книга не снискала большой популярности среди читателей. Тем не менее, вместе с режиссером Ирвингом Кешнером Ирвинг попытался написать сценарий для экранизации этого романа. Хотя попытка оказалась откровенно неудачной, это был не последний опыт работы автора с Голливудом. В это же время Ирвинг получает академический грант от фонда Рокфеллера.

В своей второй книге «Человек воды» (1972) автор вдоволь поиронизировал над нравами академического сообщества США и еще раз вернулся в Вену. В тот же год Ирвинг становится писателем-резидентом в Университете штата Айова. Его следующая книга — роман «Семейная жизнь весом в 158 фунтов» — вышла спустя два года и была посвящена непростой интимной жизни двух семейных пар в одном из университетских кампусов США. Ее заглавие неслучайно отсылает к сленгу борцов, писатель и в зрелые годы сохраняет верность этому виду спорта. В 1975 году Ирвинг стал ассистентом кафедры английского языка в колледже Маунт-Холиок (Mount Holyoke College), расположенном в штате Массачусетс. В тот же год Ирвинг получил грант от фонда Гуггенхейма.

Разочарованный тем, как издательский дом Random House продвигает его произведения, свой четвертый роман «Мир глазами Гарпа» (1978) Ирвинг отдал в издательство Dutton, руководство которого пообещало писателю всестороннюю поддержку его новой книге. Главный герой книги, протагонист автора, писатель, рассказывающий истории о своей жизни, в которых участвуют яркие, эксцентричные персонажи. Сразу после выхода роман получил восторженные рецензии и стал международным бестселлером. В 1979 «Мир глазами Гарпа» вышел в финал Американской книжной премии (American Book Award), а в следующем году стал обладателем награды Национального Книжного Фонда (National Book Foundation), которая как раз в это время стала вручаться раздельно за книги в мягком и твердом переплете. Позже произведение было экранизировано режиссером Джорджем Рой Хиллом, а в главной роли снялся Робин Уильямс. Фильм был номинирован на несколько премий Оскар. Нашлось в экранизации место и для самого автора, снявшегося в роли распорядителя в одном из рестлинг-матчей Гарпа.

«Мир по Гарпу» сделал известного узкому кругу академического писателя сверхпопулярным автором, и все последующие книги Ирвинга становились бестселлерами. Первой в этом ряду стал роман «Отель «Нью-Гэмпшир»» (1981), продажи которого шли отлично, несмотря на противоречивые отзывы критиков. Книга была быстро экранизирована, режиссером фильма выступил Тони Ричардсон, а среди исполнителей ролей были такие звезды, как Джуди Фостер, Роб Лоу и Бо Бриджес. Впрочем, экранизацию сложно назвать удачной: роман был слишком неподъёмен для того, чтобы перенести его на экран без потери многих сюжетных линий и смысловых пластов.

В 1985 году Ирвинг опубликовал книгу «Правила виноделов». Эпическое повествование разворачивается вокруг сиротского приюта, которым руководит страдающий от наркотической зависимости акушер. Многие отмечают большое количество параллелей между этой книгой и «Оливером Твистом» Чарльза Диккенса. Центральной темой романа была проблема абортов. Благодаря этой книге Ирвинг оказался в самом пекле бушевавшей в США дискуссии сторонников и противников абортов. На позицию самого автора, который является сторонником легализации абортов, повлиял опыт его приемного деда, который был акушером-гинекологом.

После публикации «Мира глазами Гарпа» Ирвинг смог отдать все свои силы сочинительству, лишь изредка устраиваясь преподавателем в различные университеты США (в том числе один раз автор поработал и в своей alma mater). Также, Ирвинг выполняет роль ассистента тренера в команде по борьбе университета, в котором учится его сын.

Следующий роман Ирвинга «Молитва об Оуэне Мини» — также семейный эпик, действие которого разворачивается в Новой Англии. Центральная тема произведения — вера и религиозность (и различие между первой и вторым). Главный герой романа — трогательный и трагичный мальчик с маленьким ростом и грубым голосом — оказывается человеком, который заранее знает о своём предназначении, и вся его жизнь, по сути, — это подготовка к тому главному, что ждёт его в конце. В этой книге меньше, чем обычно, трагикомических ситуаций, в чём-то, пожалуй, она напоминает лучшие романы приятеля и земляка Ирвинга Стивена Кинга. Как это зачастую бывает у Кинга, в жизни главного героя «Молитвы об Оуэне Мини» то и дело случаются мистические, необъяснимые случаи, да и сам он — как понимает в конце читатель, — может быть, очередное воплощение Христа. Во всяком случае, никакими рациональными объяснениями то, что происходит в романе, не «оправдать».

Книга была написана под влиянием «Жестяного барабана» Гюнтера Грасса, «Алой буквы» Натаниеля Готорна, а также произведений Диккенса. В «Молитве об Оуэне Мини» Ирвинг впервые в своём творчестве затронул тему Вьетнамской войны и её последствий для американского общества — особенно обязательного призыва, которого сам автор избежал как женатый отец ребенка и школьный преподаватель. Сейчас «Молитву об Оуэне Мини» часто включают в списки книг, рекомендованных для школьного чтения в Великобритании.


Со своей следующей книгой «Сын цирка» (1995) Ирвинг вернулся в издательство Random House. Вероятно, это его самая мрачная, сложная и трудная книга, которая лежит в стороне от магистральных тем его предыдущих романов. В центре сюжета — воспоминания живущего в Канаде индийского врача: о детстве, проведенном в странствующем по сельской Индии цирке, о волшебном мире таинственных чудаков и магов. Эту работу автора чаще всего сравнивают с книгами Чарльза Диккенса. Несмотря на противоречивые отзывы критиков, «Сын Цирка» стал национальным бестселлером, возможно, в силу того, что автор имел к тому моменту репутацию модного литератора. Следующей книги Ирвинга пришлось ждать 3 года, в 1998 выходит роман «Мужчины не ее жизни» (другое название — «Вдова на год»), названная газетой «Нью-Йорк Таймс» «заметной» книгой. Вскоре после выхода роман был экранизирован режиссером Тодом Вильямсом.

В 1999 г., после долгих лет интенсивной работы, выходит фильм по роману «Правила виноделов». Режиссером выступил Лассе Халлстрем, а в главных ролях снялись Тоби Магуайр, Шарлиз Терон, Делрой Линдо, Майкл Кейн. В фильме вновь нашлось место и для авторского камео. Путь этой книги на киноэкран был весьма тернист. Потом Ирвинг с иронией будет вспоминать, что работа над фильмом стоила «двух продюсеров, четырех режиссеров, тринадцати лет и бессчетное количество переписываний сценария». Старания себя оправдали. «Правила виноделов» принесли автору «Оскар» за лучший сценарий, а также номинировались на премию за лучший фильм.

Далее см. http://www.johnirving.ru/content/view/2/

Экранизации
Мир по Гарпу / The World According to Garp (США, реж. Джордж Рой Хилл, 1982)
Отель Нью-Хэмпшир / The Hotel New Hampshire (США, реж. Тони Ричардсон, 1984)
Правила виноделов / The Cider House Rules (США, реж. Лассе Хальстрём, 1999)
Потайная дверь / The Door in the Floor (США, реж. Тод Вильямс, по роману A Widow for One Year, 2004)
Саймон Бирч / Simon Birch (США, реж. Марк Стивен Джонсон, по роману A Prayer For Owen Meany, 1998)

Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire"

T ennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. His friends began calling him Tennessee in college, in honor of his Southern accent and his father’s home state. Williams’s father, C.C. Williams, was a traveling salesman and a heavy drinker. Williams’s mother, Edwina, was a Mississippi clergyman’s daughter prone to hysterical attacks. Until Williams was seven, he, his parents, his older sister, Rose, and his younger brother, Dakin, lived with Edwina’s parents in Mississippi.

In 1918, the Williams family moved to St. Louis, marking the start of the family’s deterioration. C.C.’s drinking increased, the family moved sixteen times in ten years, and the young Williams, always shy and fragile, was ostracized and taunted at school. During these years, he and Rose became extremely close. Edwina and Williams’s maternal grandparents also offered the emotional support he required throughout his childhood. Williams loathed his father but grew to appreciate him somewhat after deciding in therapy as an adult that his father had given him his tough survival instinct.

After being bedridden for two years as a child due to severe illness, Williams grew into a withdrawn, effeminate adolescent whose chief solace was writing. At sixteen, Williams won a prize in a national competition that asked for essays answering the question “Can a good wife be a good sport?” His answer was published in Smart Set magazine. The following year, he published a horror story in a magazine called Weird Tales, and the year after that he entered the University of Missouri to study journalism. While in college, he wrote his first plays, which were influenced by members of the southern literary renaissance such as Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, Allen Tate, and Thomas Wolfe. Before Williams could receive his degree, however, his father forced him to withdraw from school. Outraged because Williams had failed a required ROTC program course, C.C. Williams made his son go to work at the same shoe company where he himself worked.

After three years at the shoe factory, Williams had a minor nervous breakdown. He then returned to college, this time at Washington University in St. Louis. While he was studying there, a St. Louis theater group produced two of his plays, The Fugitive Kind and Candles to the Sun. Further personal problems led Williams to drop out of Washington University and enroll in the University of Iowa. While he was in Iowa, Rose, who had begun suffering from mental illness later in life, underwent a prefrontal lobotomy (an intensive brain surgery). The event greatly upset Williams, and it left his sister institutionalized for the rest of her life. Despite this trauma, Williams finally managed to graduate in 1938.

In the years following his graduation, Williams lived a bohemian life, working menial jobs and wandering from city to city. He continued to work on drama, however, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying playwriting at the New School in New York. His literary influences were evolving to include the playwright Anton Chekhov and Williams’s lifelong hero, the poet Hart Crane. He officially changed his name to Tennessee Williams upon the publication of his short story “The Field of Blue Children” in 1939. During the early years of World War II, Williams worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter and also prepared material for what would become The Glass Menagerie.

In 1944, The Glass Menagerie opened in New York and won the prestigious New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, catapulting Williams into the upper echelon of American playwrights. A Streetcar Named Desire premiered three years later at the Barrymore Theater in New York City. The play, set in contemporary times, describes the decline and fall of a fading Southern belle named Blanche DuBois. A Streetcar Named Desire cemented Williams’s reputation, garnering another Drama Critics’ Circle Award and also a Pulitzer Prize. Williams went on to win another Drama Critics’ Circle Award and Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.

Much of the pathos found in Williams’s drama was mined from the playwright’s own life. Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity were all part of Williams’s world. His experience as a known homosexual in an era unfriendly to homosexuality also informed his work. Williams’s most memorable characters, many of them female, contain recognizable elements of their author, Edwina, and Rose. His vulgar, irresponsible male characters, such as Stanley Kowalski, were likely modeled on Williams’s own father and other males who tormented Williams during his childhood.

Williams’s early plays also connected with the new American taste for realism that emerged following the Depression and World War II. The characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are trying to rebuild their lives in postwar America: Stanley and Mitch served in the military, while Blanche had affairs with young soldiers based near her home.

Williams set his plays in the South, but the compelling manner in which he rendered his themes made them universal, winning him an international audience and worldwide acclaim. However, most critics agree that the quality of Williams’s work diminished as he grew older. He suffered a long period of depression following the death of his longtime partner, Frank Merlo, in 1963. His popularity during these years also declined due to changed interests in the theater world. During the radical 1960s and 1970s, nostalgia no longer drew crowds, and Williams’s explorations of sexual mores came across as tired and old-fashioned.

Williams died in 1983 when he choked on a medicine-bottle cap in an alcohol-related incident at the Elysée Hotel in New York City. He was one month short of his seventy-second birthday. In his long career he wrote twenty-five full-length plays (five made into movies), five screenplays, over seventy one-act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir. The mark he left on the tradition of realism in American drama is indelible.
A Note on the Epigraph

The epigraph to A Streecar Named Desire is taken from a Hart Crane poem titled “The Broken Tower.” Crane was one of Williams’s icons. Williams’s use of this quotation is apt, as Crane himself often employed epigraphs from his own icons, including Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, and Blake. Williams felt a personal affinity with Crane, who, like himself, had a bitter relationship with his parents and suffered from bouts of violent alcoholism. Most important, Williams identified with Crane as a homosexual writer trying to find a means of self-expression in a heterosexual world. Unlike Williams, Crane succumbed to his demons, drowning himself in 1932 at the age of thirty-three.

Williams was influenced by Crane’s imagery and by his unusual attention to metaphor. The epigraph’s description of love as only an “instant” and as a force that precipitates “each desperate choice” brings to mind Williams’s character Blanche DuBois. Crane’s speaker’s line, “I know not whither [love’s voice is] hurled,” also suggests Blanche. With increasing desperation, Blanche “hurls” her continually denied love out into the world, only to have that love revisit her in the form of suffering.

Plot Overview

B lanche DuBois, a schoolteacher from Laurel, Mississippi, arrives at the New Orleans apartment of her sister, Stella Kowalski. Despite the fact that Blanche seems to have fallen out of close contact with Stella, she intends to stay at Stella’s apartment for an unspecified but likely lengthy period of time, given the large trunk she has with her. Blanche tells Stella that she lost Belle Reve, their ancestral home, following the death of all their remaining relatives. She also mentions that she has been given a leave of absence from her teaching position because of her bad nerves.

Though Blanche does not seem to have enough money to afford a hotel, she is disdainful of the cramped quarters of the Kowalskis’ two-room apartment and of the apartment’s location in a noisy, diverse, working-class neighborhood. Blanche’s social condescension wins her the instant dislike of Stella’s husband, an auto-parts supply man of Polish descent named Stanley Kowalski. It is clear that Stella was happy to leave behind her the social pretensions of her background in exchange for the sexual gratification she gets from her husband; she even is pregnant with his baby. Stanley immediately distrusts Blanche to the extent that he suspects her of having cheated Stella out of her share of the family inheritance. In the process of defending herself to Stanley, Blanche reveals that Belle Reve was lost due to a foreclosed mortgage, a disclosure that signifies the dire nature of Blanche’s financial circumstances. Blanche’s heavy drinking, which she attempts to conceal from her sister and brother-in-law, is another sign that all is not well with Blanche.

The unhappiness that accompanies the animal magnetism of Stella and Stanley’s marriage reveals itself when Stanley hosts a drunken poker game with his male friends at the apartment. Blanche gets under Stanley’s skin, especially when she starts to win the affections of his close friend Mitch. After Mitch has been absent for a while, speaking with Blanche in the bedroom, Stanley erupts, storms into the bedroom, and throws the radio out of the window. When Stella yells at Stanley and defends Blanche, Stanley beats her. The men pull him off, the poker game breaks up, and Blanche and Stella escape to their upstairs neighbor Eunice’s apartment. A short while later, Stanley is remorseful and cries up to Stella to forgive him. To Blanche’s alarm, Stella returns to Stanley and embraces him passionately. Mitch meets Blanche outside of the Kowalski flat and comforts her in her distress.

The next day, Blanche tries to convince Stella to leave Stanley for a better man whose social status equals Stella’s. Blanche suggests that she and Stella contact a millionaire named Shep Huntleigh for help escaping from New Orleans; when Stella laughs at her, Blanche reveals that she is completely broke. Stanley walks in as Blanche is making fun of him and secretly overhears Blanche and Stella’s conversation. Later, he threatens Blanche with hints that he has heard rumors of her disreputable past. She is visibly dismayed.

While Blanche is alone in the apartment one evening, waiting for Mitch to pick her up for a date, a teenage boy comes by to collect money for the newspaper. Blanche doesn’t have any money for him, but she hits on him and gives him a lustful kiss. Soon after the boy departs, Mitch arrives, and they go on their date. When Blanche returns, she is exhausted and clearly has been uneasy for the entire night about the rumors Stanley mentioned earlier. In a surprisingly sincere heart-to-heart discussion with Mitch, Blanche reveals the greatest tragedy of her past. Years ago, her young husband committed suicide after she discovered and chastised him for his homosexuality. Mitch describes his own loss of a former love, and he tells Blanche that they need each other.

When the next scene begins, about one month has passed. It is the afternoon of Blanche’s birthday. Stella is preparing a dinner for Blanche, Mitch, Stanley, and herself, when Stanley comes in to tell her that he has learned news of Blanche’s sordid past. He says that after losing the DuBois mansion, Blanche moved into a fleabag motel from which she was eventually evicted because of her numerous sexual liaisons. Also, she was fired from her job as a schoolteacher because the principal discovered that she was having an affair with a teenage student. Stella is horrified to learn that Stanley has told Mitch these stories about Blanche.

The birthday dinner comes and goes, but Mitch never arrives. Stanley indicates to Blanche that he is aware of her past. For a birthday present, he gives her a one-way bus ticket back to Laurel. Stanley’s cruelty so disturbs Stella that it appears the Kowalski household is about to break up, but the onset of Stella’s labor prevents the imminent fight.

Several hours later, Blanche, drunk, sits alone in the apartment. Mitch, also drunk, arrives and repeats all he’s learned from Stanley. Eventually Blanche confesses that the stories are true, but she also reveals the need for human affection she felt after her husband’s death. Mitch tells Blanche that he can never marry her, saying she isn’t fit to live in the same house as his mother. Having learned that Blanche is not the chaste lady she pretended to be, Mitch tries to have sex with Blanche, but she forces him to leave by yelling “Fire!” to attract the attention of passersby outside.

Later, Stanley returns from the hospital to find Blanche even more drunk. She tells him that she will soon be leaving New Orleans with her former suitor Shep Huntleigh, who is now a millionaire. Stanley knows that Blanche’s story is entirely in her imagination, but he is so happy about his baby that he proposes they each celebrate their good fortune. Blanche spurns Stanley, and things grow contentious. When she tries to step past him, he refuses to move out of her way. Blanche becomes terrified to the point that she smashes a bottle on the table and threatens to smash Stanley in the face. Stanley grabs her arm and says that it’s time for the “date” they’ve had set up since Blanche’s arrival. Blanche resists, but Stanley uses his physical strength to overcome her, and he carries her to bed. The pulsing music indicates that Stanley rapes Blanche.

The next scene takes place weeks later, as Stella and her neighbor Eunice pack Blanche’s bags. Blanche is in the bath, and Stanley plays poker with his buddies in the front room. A doctor will arrive soon to take Blanche to an insane asylum, but Blanche believes she is leaving to join her millionaire. Stella confesses to Eunice that she simply cannot allow herself to believe Blanche’s assertion that Stanley raped her. When Blanche emerges from the bathroom, her deluded talk makes it clear that she has lost her grip on reality.

The doctor arrives with a nurse, and Blanche initially panics and struggles against them when they try to take her away. Stanley and his friends fight to subdue Blanche, while Eunice holds Stella back to keep her from interfering. Mitch begins to cry. Finally, the doctor approaches Blanche in a gentle manner and convinces her to leave with him. She allows him to lead her away and does not look back or say goodbye as she goes. Stella sobs with her child in her arms, and Stanley comforts her with loving words and caresses.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/summary.html

To read  an in-depth analysis of  characters, themes, motifs & symbols visit

 

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/characters.html

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/canalysis.html

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/themes.html

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/facts.html

Study Questions & Essay Topics

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Quiz

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