Robert Anthony Stone (born 1937) was an American novelist whose preoccupations were politics, the media, and the random, senseless violence and cruelty that pervade contemporary life both in the Unite...
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The beginning of A. Alvarez's review of Robert Stone's fourth novel, Children of Light (1986), stands as the best concise summary of Stone's achievement that has yet been published: In just four novel...
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In the following essay, Karagueuzian notes ironic parallels between Dog Soldiers and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, asserting that Stone underscores the inadequacy of Hemingway's...
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In the following essay, Shelton examines Stone's bleak evocation of moral disintegration and the demise of the American Dream in Dog Soldiers.
Dog Soldiers (1974), the National Book Award winni...
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In the following review, Danziger criticizes Children of Light, asserting that the novel is filled with disturbing, greedy characters and a grim and depressing plot.
Strangers to Robert Stone's...
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In the following review, Eder asserts that Children of Light suffers from overwritten characters, poor dialogue, and a plot that dissolves as the book progresses.
[In Children of Light] Gordon Walker ...
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In the following review, Meyers compares Children of Light to Kate Chopin's The Awakening but faults Stone's novel for lacking the “depth and power” of his earlier works su...
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In the following review, Eder alternately praises and faults Outerbridge Reach, calling the writing “lucid and thrilling” in its passages about the sea but “bombastic” in i...
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In the following review, Adams offers a positive assessment of Outerbridge Reach, calling the work a “strong, unhappy novel.”
The new book by Robert Stone is a tough Irish-American novel...
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In the following review, Edmundson contends that the reductive characters in Outerbridge Reach limit the depth and authenticity of the novel.
Near the beginning of Children of Light, Robert Stone�...
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In the following review, Caldwell praises Outerbridge Reach, commending Stone's moral concerns but citing weaknesses in the novel's narrative structure.
Robert Stone's characters ...
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In the following review, Sutherland criticizes Stone for failing to acknowledge his debt to the documented true story of ill-fated sailor Donald Crowhurst in Outerbridge Reach, upon which the novel is...
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In the following review, King extols the passages concerning the high-seas adventure in Outerbridge Reach and commends the “noble and grand scale” of the novel.
In these days of radio co...
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In the following review, Burn discusses the links between Stone and Tom Wolfe and criticizes Stone's uncredited use of a published account of the Donald Crowhurst story in Outerbridge Reach.
Wh...
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In the following excerpt, Phillips argues that Outerbridge Reach is a successfully engaging narrative due to Stone's use of meticulous detail.
“I know of almost no pleasure greater than ...
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In the following review, Saari contends that Stone is a “writer of rare power” who successfully examines the darker side of human nature in works such as Outerbridge Reach.
This novel [O...
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In the following essay, Packer provides an overview of Stone's novels, thematic concerns, and character types, noting that although Children of Light and Outerbridge Reach are weaker than his f...
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In the following essay, Finn provides an overview of Stone's novels and examines the strengths and weaknesses of his writing style, social and political concerns, and underlying religious senti...
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In the following essay, Bloom discusses Stone's intertextual commentary on the uses and abuses of literary art in Outerbridge Reach, Children of Light, and A Flag for Sunrise. Bloom contends th...
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In the following interview, Stone discusses the creation and characters of Outerbridge Reach, his approach to writing, his moral, political, and artistic concerns, American poetry, the formal educatio...
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In the following essay, Fredrickson examines Stone's presentation of cynical, disillusioned left-wing sympathizers and amoral leftist revolutionaries in his novels, particularly Dog Soldiers an...
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In the following excerpt, McGraw lauds Bear and His Daughter, contending that Stone writes concisely and powerfully in stories containing familiar themes from his novels such as morality and motivatio...
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In the following review, Eder claims that the character and plot development in Bear and His Daughter is uneven and faults Stone for failing to compel readers to care about the protagonists.
Like the ...
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In the following review, Edwards provides an overview of Stone's fiction and offers a positive assessment of Bear and His Daughter.
Of the novelists who came into their own in the eventful, sca...
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In the following excerpt, Pritchard praises the descriptive passages and dark humor in Bear and His Daughter, contending that Stone is a competent short story writer but that his abilities are more su...
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In the following review, Miller praises Bear and His Daughter, asserting that Stone is a careful, polished writer who deserves to be read.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they&...
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In the following review, Connolly offers a positive assessment of Bear and His Daughter, noting the critical trend to compare Stone's writing to that of Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver.
Thi...
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In the following review, Hynes contends that Damascus Gate is ambitious, powerful, and “Dickensian” in its scope.
Robert Stone's reputation as a political novelist is something of...
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In the following review, Gitlin argues that Damascus Gate is “overlong and overstuffed” with characters and subplots.
It would be much too simple to say that a lot of Robert Stone'...
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In the following review, Eder commends the action, plot, and suspense in Damascus Gate but notes weaknesses in Stone's presentation of the novel's religious zealots.
In Jerusalem'...
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In the following review, Halkin criticizes Stone's superficial understanding of Israel and Jewish religious nationalism in Damascus Gate.
Robert Stone is a first-rate writer of fiction. He may ...
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In the following review, Gardner provides a favorable assessment of Damascus Gate but notes shortcomings in the novel's lackluster protagonist and stereotyped characters.
Robert Stone is surpri...
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In the following review, Garvey argues that Damascus Gate succeeds both as a thriller and as an examination of spirituality, extolling its use of such elements as dark humor, adventure, and the quest ...
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In the following review, Hower asserts that Stone employs a wide myriad of characters, settings, and motifs in a successful blending of the thriller genre and the spiritual quest in Damascus Gate.
Rob...
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In the following review, Wood faults Damascus Gate for being an amalgam of “techniques and conventions” aimed at maintaining simplicity, grouping Stone with a number of contemporary Amer...
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In the following review, Quinn claims that Damascus Gate contains flat language, too many plots and characters, and fails in its aspirations as a thriller.
A great deal of profoundly fractured cerebra...
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In the following review, Hulse criticizes Damascus Gate, claiming that Stone fails to “come to terms” with his religious subject matter in the novel and that the narrative is unconvincin...
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In the following excerpt, Bull discusses the political dimension of the novel form and examines the presence of ideological impasses in Stone's A Flag for Sunrise and Don DeLillo's Mao I...
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In the following review, Saunders offers praise for both Stone's ability to tie up loose plot threads in Damascus Gate and for clearly delineating a large cast of characters in a political thri...
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In the following essay, Fredrickson examines Stone's religious preoccupations and spiritually bereft protagonists in Damascus Gate, as they represent a reprise and elaboration of Stone's...
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In the following review, the critic calls Bay of Souls “a small masterpiece,” contending that the novel is spare, intense, and clear.
Faulknerian intensity and a narrative economy remini...
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In the following review, Wilentz compliments Stone's abilities as a writer but faults Bay of Souls for what she contends is a weak plot and a preoccupation with spirituality.
The title of Rober...
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In the following interview, Stone discusses his past and the inspirations behind Bay of Souls.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Le Meridien Hotel in Beverly Hills looks like a setting from a Robert Ston...
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Critical Essay by Granville Hicks
[A] first novel about which I am most enthusiastic is Robert Stone's A Hall of Mirrors, which would be notable in any season and whether it was the author�...
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Critical Essay by A. Alvarez
Robert Stone has published only three novels in 14 years, but they have established him as one of the most interesting and gifted novelists in America. He is also slightly...
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Critical Essay by Richard Poirier
[Almost] any human movement in Stone's novels becomes, whether this is intended or not, a metaphor for intrusion or intervention, and of the suffering that fol...
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Critical Essay by Francis King
Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers, made into a successful film, dealt with what his publishers termed 'post Vietnam trauma'; and although A Flag for Sunri...
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Critical Essay by David Bosworth
A Flag for Sunrise is too long and badly paced. In part, this arises from the understandable difficulties of inventing and populating a foreign land. Less excusable, h...
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Critical Essay by Ivan Gold
It is almost impertinent to say that the 30-year-old author of this first novel has talent, and it is impertinent to try and relate his gifts to his age or publishing histo...
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Critical Essay by Emile Capouya
The extraordinary richness of [A Hall of Mirrors] lies not so much in the plot as in the wonderfully drawn secondary characters, all on the margin of society and mostly...
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Critical Essay by Prairie Schooner
On the jacket of Robert Stone's Hall of Mirrors, Wallace Stegner says that Stone "writes like a bird, like an angel"—which is not at all ...
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Critical Essay by L. Hugh Moore
[A Hall of Mirrors] provides a profound and disquieting vision of contemporary American society and possible responses to that society. A measure of the artistic succes...
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Critical Essay by Michael Wood
Squalid, spectacular, agitated, littered with ancient ruins and riddled with more spies than you can shake a cloak at, Central America seems almost too much of a good th...
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Critical Essay by Leonard Michaels
A Flag for Sunrise is about Catholics—a nun, a priest, an anthropologist, a drifter—caught up among spies, gun runners, murderers, maniacs, and revolut...
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Critical Essay by Geoffrey Stokes
Stone's characters wear their emblematic responsibilities so naturally that A Flag for Sunrise works as an adventure yarn, but on the level at which it aspires...
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Critical Essay by Jonathan Yardley
Robert Stone's [A Flag for Sunrise] is sweeping and ambitious. It deals with major political and social themes; it is set in a small, backward, near-mythic Ce...
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Robert Anthony Stone
Robert (Anthony) Stone
