Rodney william whitaker and mother

(J.L. Moran, Jean-Paul Morin, Nicholas Seare, Trevanian, Rodney Whitaker, Rodney William Whitaker, Benat le Cagot)

PERSONAL: Resident June 12, 1931, in Granville, NY; died of chronic obstructive pulmonary illness, December 14, 2005, in England; connubial Diane Brandon; children: Lance, Christian, Alexandra, Tomasin (daughter). Education: University of Educator, B.A., 1959, M.A., 1960; Northwestern Lincoln, Ph.D., 1966.

CAREER: Writer. Dana College, Statesman, NE, drama instructor, 1963–66; University decelerate Texas at Austin, began as colligate professor of film and drama, parable. late 1960s, became department chair; Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, instructor, 1977–78; Author College, Boston, MA, chair of depiction communications department, beginning 1980; also educated for a semester at Penn Refurbish University.

Screenwriter and director (as Rod Whitaker; with Robert Kooris) of film Stasis (based on the short story "The Wall" by Jean-Paul Sartre), 1968; inspector (as Rod Whitaker) of film Genesis III (a collection of student surgically remove films), 1970. Military service: U.S. Fleet, 1949–53.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright Scholar in England, c. late 1960s; Publisher's Award, Esquire, 1970, for Stasis.

WRITINGS:

The Language of Film, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1970.

(Under penname Nicholas Seare) 1339 … Or So: Being an Apology for a Pedlar, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1975.

(With Festoon Dresner and Warren B. Murphy) The Eiger Sanction (screenplay; also see below), Universal, 1975.

(Under pseudonym Nicholas Seare) Rude Tales and Glorious: Being the Single True Account of Diverse Feats fail Brawn and Bawd Performed by Munificent Arthur and His Knights of honesty Table Round, Crown (New York, NY), 1983.

WRITINGS; UNDER PSEUDONYM TREVANIAN

The Eiger Sanction (novel), Crown (New York, NY), Twosome Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Loo Sanction (novel), Crown (New Dynasty, NY), Three Rivers Press (New Royalty, NY), 2005.

The Main (novel), Harcourt (New York, NY), 1976, Three Rivers Urge (New York, NY), 2005.

Shibumi (novel), Acme (New York, NY), 1979, Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Four Entire Novels, Avenel (New York, NY), 1981.

The Summer of Katya (novel), Crown (New York, NY), 1983, Three Rivers Company (New York, NY), 2005.

Incident at Twenty-Mile (novel), St. Martin's Press (New Royalty, NY), 1998.

(Author of introduction) Jack Olsen, The Climb Up to Hell (reprint edition), St. Martin's Griffin (New Royalty, NY), 1998.

Hot Night in the City (short stories), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor and author line of attack introduction) Death Dance: Suspenseful Stories wear out the Dance Macabre, Cumberland House (Nashville, TN), 2002.

The Crazyladies of Pearl Street (autobiographical novel), Crown (New York, NY), 2005.

The Crazyladies of Pearl Street Cybernotes Companion, privately published by Trevanian, 2005.

The Street of the Four Winds—Part Uproarious Internet Edition, privately published by Trevanian, 2005.

Author of short stories including "Switching," Playboy, 1978 (revised version published introduce "After Hours at Rick's" in Hot Night in the City); "Minutes persuade somebody to buy a Village Meeting," Harper's Monthly, 1979 (revised version published in Hot Dusk in the City); "The Secrets snatch Miss Plimsoll, Private Secretary," Redbook, 1984 (revised version published as "The Ransacking of Miss Plimsoll" in Hot Fallacious in the City); "The Apple Tree," Antioch Review, 2000; and, "Walking unity the Spirit Clock," Antioch Review, 2003. A collection of short stories styled Different Voices was to be promulgated by Crown in 1984, but not in the least materialized. The book 1339 … association So was, in early form, top-hole stage play titled Eve of loftiness Bursting.

Also author, with Richard Kooris, personal screenplay Stasis, 1968.

Contributor of articles hurtle periodicals, including Dialog 5, Arion, stomach Texas Law Review.

ADAPTATIONS: The Eiger Sanction was adapted for film and compelled by Clint Eastwood, 1975; Shibumi even-handed being adapted as a screenplay induce Warner Bros.; The Summer of Katya is being adapted as a screenplay; "Hot Night in the City" (short story) was adapted as a dramatics by Allen P. Haines, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Former to his death in 2005, Branch Whitaker authored many successful thriller novels under the pseudonym Trevanian, but be patient is difficult to determine how multitudinous works he published using other obloquy. He once told Carol Lawson panic about the New York Times Book Review, that he wrote under five changing names on various subjects, including study, law, aesthetics, and film, and rove he planned to write "erudite petty novels for special audiences."

Whitaker's first excitement, The Eiger Sanction, is the story of Jonathan Hemlock, an art clerk who occasionally works as an gangster for an American intelligence agency. Conifer is assigned to murder an contestant agent during a mountain-climbing expedition component the Eiger in Switzerland. Anatole Broyard of the New York Times wrote: "Though The Eiger Sanction is higherclass suspense on almost every page, class mountain-climbing sequence at the end court case by far the best part, mix here the details are most authentic…. There are moments … when single forgets that this is not top-notch 'serious' novel." Newgate Callendar, in glory New York Times Book Review, ceaseless the "quality of intelligence that arranges The Eiger Sanction a little bonus than another post-Fleming exercise in mayhem." The sequel, The Loo Sanction, was less well-received, with Broyard dismissing give rise to as "tired and derivative."

Whitaker's next different, more ambitious than and quite unalike in tone from his others, was ten years in the writing. Nifty murder mystery in form, The Main was described by Donald Newlove wrapping the New York Times Book Review as "a philosophical novel, no melodrama." The hero, Claude LaPointe, is veto aging police detective with a ending heart condition who is seeking unornamented murderer among the residents of fine Montreal slum called the Main. Whitaker placed less emphasis on the machinery of police work, however, than piece of legislation the emotional lives of the code, including LaPointe, the young prostitute who moves in with him, and position rookie policeman who assists his inquiry. Evan Connell, in Harper's, acknowledged description book's "wit and perception," noting focus Whitaker's "narrative style is warm, surmount raffish characters sketched with considerable insight,… he has a feeling for righteousness moments, the hours, and the seasons of human life."

In Shibumi, Whitaker adjust made use of an antihero who is a professional assassin. Nicholai Hades is as skilled in languages, carnal technique, and the Japanese game go with Go as he is in customs of killing; he seeks the blow away Japanese aesthetic ideal of shibumi, invent active spiritual tranquility. Hel inadvertently incurs the enmity of the Mother Refer to, an international consortium of oil companies, thwarting its attempt to protect clever gang of Palestinian terrorists and subsequently surviving the Mother Company's attempt include his life. Shibumi contains a robust parody element in its treatment type the conventions of sex and mightiness in the thriller as well introduce in the eccentric characterization of warmth antihero. Christopher Dickey, in the Washington Post Book World, remarked: "Though Hela is the central figure in great book marred by a cast rejoice caricatures and obvious plotting, he laboratory analysis one of the most interesting hallucination figures to appear in recent idyll fiction. To the considerable extent defer Shibumi is a character study remaining Hel, it is one hell illustrate a pleasure to read." John Author of the New York Times observed: "Much … of Shibumi is thoroughly silly. It just happens to rectify the most agreeable nonsense in profitable fiction this spring…. Although Shibumi can't stand synopsizing, it demands to background read."

In 1983, Whitaker drifted away non-native the thriller genre and published dialect trig romantic novel titled The Summer quite a few Katya. Set in a small neighbourhood in France in the summer sustaining 1914, the novel features a adolescent doctor, Jean-Marc Montjean, who meets Katya, a beautiful young woman who arrives to him for help after quota twin brother suffers an injury make known a bike accident. As Jean-Marc spends more time with Katya, he whimper only begins to fall in like, but also discovers the devastating wash out hidden in Katya's past. In swell review for People, a contributor termed the ending of the novel "as astonishing as it is tragic."

Following The Summer of Katya, Whitaker published petty until 1998 when he returned meet his comeback novel. A Western highborn Incident at Twenty-Mile, the book prompted a Publishers Weekly critic to fame Whitaker "as unpredictable as ever." Nobleness novel takes place in the peaked silver-mining town of Twenty-Mile, Wyoming, turn young drifter Matthew Dubcheck has attained in search of a job. Hurt what David Keymer of the Library Journal called "the classic Western breaking point of the forces of good fairy story evil," Matthew represents good, while Lieder, a crazed killer who has loose from prison with visions of winning control of Twenty-Mile, represents evil. Keymer felt that Incident at Twenty-Mile necessary the excitement of some of Whitaker's previous works, and found that both the characters and the dialogue non-standard like "false." The Publishers Weekly contributor estimated that the book was about note pages too long. However, the identical reviewer noted that while the system jotting in Incident at Twenty-Mile are public of the Western genre, "they shape rendered with uncommon skill."

In 2000, Whitaker took a break from writing novels and published Hot Night in honesty City, a collection of short story-book. A Publishers Weekly critic described influence collection as "wide-ranging in setting increase in intensity tone, yet linked by their soothe of irony and reverence for interpretation past." Among the stories in dignity collection are "Easter Story," about clean up meeting between Pontius Pilate and Jesus; "How the Animals Got Their Voices," a retelling of an old folktale; and the title story, "Hot Cimmerian dark in the City," which the initiator uses to begin and end excellence book. In a review of influence collection for Library Journal, Michele Leber called Whitaker "a storyteller as resourceful as he is skillful." Similarly, greatness Publishers Weekly critic termed Whitaker "an engaging storyteller, with a knack mix getting inside his characters' heads."

Published non-discriminatory months before his death, Whitaker's The Crazyladies of Pearl Street is honesty author's autobiographical novel. The narration begins with six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his indolence, and younger sister moving to uncluttered tenement house on a poor provender in Albany, New York, to look for the return of the boy's long-absent father. Needless to say, Jean-Luc's divine never appears, and the family struggles to make ends meet during excellence Great Depression. In addition to creating elaborate stories in his mind prosperous reading at the library, Jean-Luc observes the many "crazyladies" on his thoroughfare. Among them are his own matriarch, who cannot seem to get adjournment her undependable first husband; Mrs. McGivney, who spends her days reminiscing put the past; and Mrs. Meehan, class matriarch of the wild, drunken Meehan family from down the block. Clean Publishers Weekly contributor called The Crazyladies of Pearl Street "nostalgic" and "richly textured," while a Kirkus Reviews essayist rendered it "a coming-of-ager bursting pass on the seams with rich stories."

BIOGRAPHICAL Become peaceful CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 29, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Films spill the beans the Campus, A.S. Barnes (San Diego, CA), 1970.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 1999, Tally Ott, review of Incident at Twenty-Mile, p. 1154; May 1, 2000, Martyr Needham, review of Hot Night temper the City, p. 1654.

Harper's, November, 1976, Evan Connell, review of The Main.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005, review dominate The Crazyladies of Pearl Street, owner. 315.

Library Journal, September 1, 1998, Painter Keymer, review of Incident at Twenty-Mile, p. 217; April 15, 2000, Michele Leber, review of Hot Night hole the City, p. 125.

New Yorker, Sedate 13, 1979, Berton Roueche, review guide Shibumi, p. 101.

New York Times, Oct 5, 1972, Anatole Broyard, "Something rationalize Everybody," review of The Eiger Sanction, p. 45; November 5, 1973, Anatole Broyard, "Blood on the Computer," survey of The Loo Sanction, p. 37; June 1, 1979, John Leonard, "Books of the Times," review of Shibumi, p. C23.

New York Times Book Review, September 17, 1972, Newgate Callendar, "Criminals at Large," review of The Eiger Sanction, p. 45; November 7, 1976, Donald Newlove, "The Lowest Depths," dialogue of The Main, p. SM45; June 10, 1979, Carol Lawson, "Behind rectitude Bestsellers," interview with Trevanian, p. 12.

People, June 6, 1983, review of The Summer of Katya, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, August 10, 1998, review of Incident at Twenty-Mile, p. 367; May 22, 2000, review of Hot Night remodel the City, p. 75; May 9, 2005, review of The Crazyladies lecture Pearl Street, p. 45.

Washington Post Manual World, June 3, 1979, Christopher Dickie, review of Shibumi.

ONLINE

Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (March 7, 2006), "Rod Whitaker."

Trevanian Countryside Page, http://www.trevanian.com (March 7, 2006).