Robert Stone (Dog Soldiers/A Flag for Sunrise/Outerbrid…
For the first time in one volume, three modern masterworks from the National Book Award-winning writer who explored the dark undercurrents of the American Century
Blurring the boundaries between literary fiction and political and military thrillers, Robert Stone was one of the most dynamic and critically acclaimed American writers of the last fifty years. Here, released in conjunction with Madison Smartt Bell's major new biography, is a deluxe edition gathering Stone's three finest novels, modern masterpieces about the dark underside of the American century. Stone's own experiences in Saigon inspired Dog Soldiers (1974), in which an ill-fated scheme to smuggle three kilos of heroin from South Vietnam to California comes to the attention of a corrupt drug enforcement official, setting in motion a lethal chase across a nightmarish landscape populated by poseurs, hustlers, psychopathic criminals, and failed gurus. Winner of the National Book Award, Dog Soldiers ranks with the work of Michael Herr and Tim O'Brien as a psychological reckoning with how Vietnam changed America. A Flag for Sunrise (1981) depicts of a leftist revolution in the fictious Central American country of Tecan and its impact on three North Justin Feeney, an idealistic nun; Frank Holliwell, an anthropologist who does favors for the CIA; and Pablo Tabor, an enraged Coast Guard deserter. Through their fates Stone explores the search for moral order in a terrifying universe beset by fear and evil. In Outerbridge Reach (1992) Owen Browne, a Navy veteran of Vietnam turned boat salesman, seeks to test his courage amid the materialism, corruption, and superficiality of 1980s America by entering a solo around-the-world yacht race. Alone in the South Atlantic, Browne discovers his capacity for deception and enlightenment in a sea tale worthy of Melville and Conrad.
- GenresFictionLiterature
1216 pages, Hardcover
Published March 3, 2020
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About the author
ROBERT STONE was the author of seven novels: A Hall of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers (winner of the National Book Award), A Flag for Sunrise, Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, and Bay of Souls. His story collection, Bear and His Daughter, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2006.
His work was typically characterized by psychological complexity, political concerns, and dark humor.
A lifelong adventurer who in his 20s befriended Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and what he called ‘‘all those crazies’’ of the counterculture, Mr. Stone had a fateful affinity for outsiders, especially those who brought hard times on themselves. Starting with the 1966 novel ‘‘A Hall of Mirrors,’’ Mr. Stone set his stories everywhere from the American South to the Far East. He was a master of making art out of his character’s follies, whether the adulterous teacher in ‘‘Death of the Black-Haired Girl,’’ the fraudulent seafarer in ‘‘Outerbridge Reach,’’ or the besieged journalist in ‘‘Dog Soldiers,’’ winner of the National Book Award in 1975.
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122 reviews
The existential Angust can be found also in American writers. When I read Faulkner for the first time, I confess, the primitiveness in his writing style gave me a flinch. But, in a different sense, I cannot behave like a disguised shrunken head before this kind of psychological writer.
How the dark side of the Cold War in America could be revealed in novelists form? Author does not utilize the expression like News From Nowhere, nor those of Malraux, John Ralston Saul and also does not formalize the theme by magic and psychic light of Balzac.
He seems to have been rather fond of writing in Flaubert's battle field,that is, his characters behave as if all of them were disdained shrunken heads.
The hard point is the reality of psychoanalysis: Nobody writes anything without promissed gain after writing.
I stopped reading at the sentence in Outerbridge Reach. "Early hospitalzation is necessary“.
277 reviews2 followers
Very solid writing throughout. I bought this volume for Dog Soldiers but enjoyed Outerbridge Reach the most. Stone didn’t publish a lot of novels, but the ones here are well polished. There really aren’t any heroes to be had, but plenty of compelling characters.
310 reviews
I read Dog Soldiers, the first novel in this volume. Literary noir, very 1970s. Read it mostly on the beach in Cozumel.
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