Thompson William Gunn was born in Gravesend, Kent, England, on August 29,1929. His parents, both journalists, relocated to the London suburb of Hempstead Heath, where they outlasted the Blitz and the rigors of the war. His late teens saw a stint in the British Army and a brief period living and working in Paris. It was there that Gunn made his first serious foray into writing, reading the French masters and trying his hand at fiction. In the early 1950s, he attendedTrinity College at Cambridge and published his first collection of verse, Fighting Terms, while still an undergraduate. A creative writing fellowship atStanford University brought him to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1954. In 1958, Gunn accepted an offer to teach at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, all the time keeping one ear tuned to the sexual and cultural revolution sweeping through San Francisco and the nation. After...