John Hawkes Summary
Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) was a Chilean poet and educator. Her poetry earned her the Nobel Prize for literature in 1945.Gabriela Mistral was born Lucila Godoy Alcaya on April 6, 1889, at Vicu&ntild... Read more

John Hawkes was born in Stamford, Connecticut on 17 August 1925. He married Sophie Goode Tazewell in 1947, and they have four children. Hawkes took his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1949. He ha... Read more

A writer of highly experimental, nightmarish fiction, John Hawkes was one of the most original and uncompromising artists to come out of the post-World War II generation of writers. Challenging establ... Read more

In the following essay, Greiner offers a close analysis of terror in John Hawkes's Death, Sleep & the Traveler, noting that the "pure terror" of the novel represents Hawkes... Read more

Critical Essay by Ronald Wallace It is sometimes dangerous to trust an author's comments on his own work, but it is sometimes equally dangerous not to trust him. Schooled in the "intent... Read more

Critical Essay by Edward R. Stephenson The Passion Artist is a startling, erotic, terrifyingly honest and stylistically lush achievement, the kind of novel his readers have come to expect from John H... Read more

Critical Essay by Albert J. Guerard The preoccupation with sexual anxiety and impotence may mislead readers into seeing The Passion Artist as a continuation of Hawkes's trilogy: Blood Oranges,... Read more

Critical Essay by Patrick O'donnell To "place" any contemporary author in a literary context or tradition is a hazardous affair, especially when, as is the case with Hawkes, that... Read more

Critical Essay by Lorna Sage Hawkes's Virginie is a series of interwoven erotic tableaux, very deliberate, intensely artificial, conceived as he says in a reverie on de Sade…. In each, ... Read more

Critical Essay by Donald J. Greiner John Hawkes occupies a peculiar place in contemporary American fiction. He is one of the few truly gifted writers in the so-called black humor movement which has f... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles Champlin [John Hawkes, a] prolific, well-regarded author of modernist fiction, has in "Virginie: Her Two Lives" written what is at once a parody, pastiche and ... Read more

Critical Essay by Angela Carter There is considerable resistance in the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant tradition to the notion that sexuality might involve more than the sum of the relevant parts. Since Joh... Read more

Critical Essay by Alan Friedman [In] conception and execution ["Virginie"] has a certain grandeur and an impressive flaw…. "Virginie" is an ambitious enterprise, an... Read more

In the following essay, Murphy evaluates John Hawkes's The Passion Artist as a work that "explores the fantasies, manifestations, doubts, and transformations of male heterosexuality in t... Read more