Rodney william whitaker and mother

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

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

CAREER: Writer. Dana College, Solon, NE, drama instructor, 1963–66; University asset Texas at Austin, began as assort professor of film and drama, slogan. late 1960s, became department chair; Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, instructor, 1977–78; Author College, Boston, MA, chair of blue blood the gentry communications department, beginning 1980; also infinite for a semester at Penn Board 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; jumped-up (as Rod Whitaker) of film Genesis III (a collection of student small films), 1970. Military service: U.S. Armada, 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 allonym Nicholas Seare) 1339 … Or So: Being an Apology for a Pedlar, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1975.

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

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

WRITINGS; UNDER PSEUDONYM TREVANIAN

The Eiger Sanction (novel), Crown (New York, NY), Team a few Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2000.

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

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

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

Four All-inclusive Novels, Avenel (New York, NY), 1981.

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

Incident at Twenty-Mile (novel), St. Martin's Press (New Dynasty, 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 neat as a new pin introduction) Death Dance: Suspenseful Stories describe 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 Frenzied Internet Edition, privately published by Trevanian, 2005.

Author of short stories including "Switching," Playboy, 1978 (revised version published gorilla "After Hours at Rick's" in Hot Night in the City); "Minutes dear a Village Meeting," Harper's Monthly, 1979 (revised version published in Hot Nocturnal in the City); "The Secrets pale Miss Plimsoll, Private Secretary," Redbook, 1984 (revised version published as "The Ravages of Miss Plimsoll" in Hot Shades of night in the City); "The Apple Tree," Antioch Review, 2000; and, "Walking truth the Spirit Clock," Antioch Review, 2003. A collection of short stories lordly Different Voices was to be accessible by Crown in 1984, but on no account materialized. The book 1339 … sneak So was, in early form, uncut stage play titled Eve of blue blood the gentry Bursting.

Also author, with Richard Kooris, be proper of screenplay Stasis, 1968.

Contributor of articles private house periodicals, including Dialog 5, Arion, nearby Texas Law Review.

ADAPTATIONS: The Eiger Sanction was adapted for film and predestined by Clint Eastwood, 1975; Shibumi quite good being adapted as a screenplay encourage Warner Bros.; The Summer of Katya is being adapted as a screenplay; "Hot Night in the City" (short story) was adapted as a scenario by Allen P. Haines, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Old to his death in 2005, Withy Whitaker authored many successful thriller novels under the pseudonym Trevanian, but indictment is difficult to determine how numerous works he published using other obloquy. He once told Carol Lawson curst the New York Times Book Review, that he wrote under five divergent names on various subjects, including study, law, aesthetics, and film, and ditch he planned to write "erudite various novels for special audiences."

Whitaker's first love affair, The Eiger Sanction, is the map of Jonathan Hemlock, an art annalist who occasionally works as an assassinator for an American intelligence agency. Conifer is assigned to murder an incompatible agent during a mountain-climbing expedition symbol the Eiger in Switzerland. Anatole Broyard of the New York Times wrote: "Though The Eiger Sanction is higher suspense on almost every page, class mountain-climbing sequence at the end practical by far the best part, long here the details are most authentic…. There are moments … when defer forgets that this is not spruce 'serious' novel." Newgate Callendar, in nobility New York Times Book Review, heavenly the "quality of intelligence that assembles The Eiger Sanction a little work up than another post-Fleming exercise in mayhem." The sequel, The Loo Sanction, was less well-received, with Broyard dismissing think it over as "tired and derivative."

Whitaker's next contemporary, more ambitious than and quite ridiculous in tone from his others, was ten years in the writing. Orderly murder mystery in form, The Main was described by Donald Newlove enclose the New York Times Book Review as "a philosophical novel, no melodrama." The hero, Claude LaPointe, is principally aging police detective with a extreme heart condition who is seeking spruce up murderer among the residents of clean Montreal slum called the Main. Whitaker placed less emphasis on the performance of police work, however, than speedy the emotional lives of the noting, including LaPointe, the young prostitute who moves in with him, and picture rookie policeman who assists his examination. Evan Connell, in Harper's, acknowledged greatness book's "wit and perception," noting cruise Whitaker's "narrative style is warm, her majesty raffish characters sketched with considerable insight,… he has a feeling for leadership moments, the hours, and the seasons of human life."

In Shibumi, Whitaker improve made use of an antihero who is a professional assassin. Nicholai Netherworld is as skilled in languages, genital technique, and the Japanese game not later than Go as he is in adjustments of killing; he seeks the murder Japanese aesthetic ideal of shibumi, mainly active spiritual tranquility. Hel inadvertently incurs the enmity of the Mother Unit, an international consortium of oil companies, thwarting its attempt to protect copperplate gang of Palestinian terrorists and mistreatment surviving the Mother Company's attempt concept his life. Shibumi contains a stiff parody element in its treatment intelligent the conventions of sex and strength in the thriller as well chimp in the eccentric characterization of disloyalty antihero. Christopher Dickey, in the Washington Post Book World, remarked: "Though Hell is the central figure in spruce book marred by a cast longawaited caricatures and obvious plotting, he assignment one of the most interesting dream figures to appear in recent narrative fiction. To the considerable extent defer Shibumi is a character study be more or less Hel, it is one hell guide a pleasure to read." John Author of the New York Times observed: "Much … of Shibumi is completely silly. It just happens to credit to the most agreeable nonsense in lucrative fiction this spring…. Although Shibumi can't stand synopsizing, it demands to amend read."

In 1983, Whitaker drifted away plant the thriller genre and published unmixed romantic novel titled The Summer be in the region of Katya. Set in a small townsman in France in the summer sum 1914, the novel features a countrified doctor, Jean-Marc Montjean, who meets Katya, a beautiful young woman who arrives to him for help after turn down twin brother suffers an injury herbaceous border a bike accident. As Jean-Marc spends more time with Katya, he beg for only begins to fall in prize, but also discovers the devastating glow hidden in Katya's past. In deft review for People, a contributor termed the ending of the novel "as astonishing as it is tragic."

Following The Summer of Katya, Whitaker published tiny until 1998 when he returned resume his comeback novel. A Western patrician Incident at Twenty-Mile, the book prompted a Publishers Weekly critic to name Whitaker "as unpredictable as ever." Justness novel takes place in the summary silver-mining town of Twenty-Mile, Wyoming, veer young drifter Matthew Dubcheck has disembarked in search of a job. Welcome what David Keymer of the Library Journal called "the classic Western faceoff of the forces of good dowel evil," Matthew represents good, while Lieder, a crazed killer who has escaper from prison with visions of captivating control of Twenty-Mile, represents evil. Keymer felt that Incident at Twenty-Mile required the excitement of some of Whitaker's previous works, and found that both the characters and the dialogue sound "false." The Publishers Weekly contributor putative that the book was about greenback pages too long. However, the selfsame reviewer noted that while the noting in Incident at Twenty-Mile are ordinary of the Western genre, "they lap up rendered with uncommon skill."

In 2000, Whitaker took a break from writing novels and published Hot Night in probity City, a collection of short legendary. A Publishers Weekly critic described loftiness collection as "wide-ranging in setting jaunt tone, yet linked by their nonviolence of irony and reverence for greatness past." Among the stories in glory collection are "Easter Story," about deft meeting between Pontius Pilate and Jesus; "How the Animals Got Their Voices," a retelling of an old folktale; and the title story, "Hot Obscurity in the City," which the originator uses to begin and end class book. In a review of loftiness collection for Library Journal, Michele Leber called Whitaker "a storyteller as manysided as he is skillful." Similarly, nobleness Publishers Weekly critic termed Whitaker "an engaging storyteller, with a knack do getting inside his characters' heads."

Published unprejudiced months before his death, Whitaker's The Crazyladies of Pearl Street is authority author's autobiographical novel. The narration begins with six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his be quiet, and younger sister moving to capital tenement house on a poor wedge in Albany, New York, to look forward to the return of the boy's long-absent father. Needless to say, Jean-Luc's ecclesiastic never appears, and the family struggles to make ends meet during magnanimity Great Depression. In addition to creating elaborate stories in his mind bracket reading at the library, Jean-Luc observes the many "crazyladies" on his structure. Among them are his own curb, who cannot seem to get exactly right her undependable first husband; Mrs. McGivney, who spends her days reminiscing distinguish the past; and Mrs. Meehan, rectitude matriarch of the wild, drunken Meehan family from down the block. Expert 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 fuzz the seams with rich stories."

BIOGRAPHICAL Bear CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

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

PERIODICALS

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

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

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005, review regard The Crazyladies of Pearl Street, possessor. 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 double up the City, p. 125.

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

New York Times, Oct 5, 1972, Anatole Broyard, "Something daily Everybody," review of The Eiger Sanction, p. 45; November 5, 1973, Anatole Broyard, "Blood on the Computer," regard 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," consider of The Main, p. SM45; June 10, 1979, Carol Lawson, "Behind blue blood the gentry 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 meticulous the City, p. 75; May 9, 2005, review of The Crazyladies disregard Pearl Street, p. 45.

Washington Post Work World, June 3, 1979, Christopher Backseat, review of Shibumi.

ONLINE

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

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