"I've only been a writer," William Goldman once told a biographer. "My first novel was taken the summer I finished graduate school, so I've never known anything else." His career has spanned three decades and has included several dozen screenplays, novels, plays, and works of criticism. By the end of the 1970s Goldman had established himself as one of the most highly paid writers in America. Many of his works deal with themes stemming from the stresses of male adolescence. Several of his works, most notably his original screenplay Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), have become a part of the popular mythology of our time, and as his popularity has increased, it has brought with it increased critical attention, further cementing his reputation as one of film's most dependable screenwriters.

Goldman was born in Chicago, the son of Marion Weil and businessman Maurice Clarence Goldman. Although a...