Rodney william whitaker and mother

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

PERSONAL: Born June 12, 1931, in Granville, NY; deadly of chronic obstructive pulmonary malady, December 14, 2005, in England; married Diane Brandon; children: Disappointed, Christian, Alexandra, Tomasin (daughter).

Education: University of Washington, B.A., 1959, M.A., 1960; Northwestern University, Phd, 1966.

CAREER: Writer. Dana College, Solon, NE, drama instructor, 1963–66; Further education college of Texas at Austin, began as associate professor of single and drama, c. late Sixties, became department chair; Bucknell Doctrine, Lewisburg, PA, instructor, 1977–78; Writer College, Boston, MA, chair work the communications department, beginning 1980; also taught for a name at Penn State University.

Screenwriter submit director (as Rod Whitaker; get a feel for Robert Kooris) of film Stasis (based on the short composition "The Wall" by Jean-Paul Sartre), 1968; director (as Rod Whitaker) of film Genesis III (a collection of student short films), 1970.

Military service: U.S. Fleet, 1949–53.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright Scholar predicament England, c. late 1960s; Publisher's Award, Esquire, 1970, for Stasis.

WRITINGS:

The Language of Film, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1970.

(Under pseudonym Saint Seare) 1339 … Or So: Being an Apology for smart Pedlar, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1975.

(With Hal Dresner and Tunnel B.

Murphy) The Eiger Sanction (screenplay; also see below), General, 1975.

(Under pseudonym Nicholas Seare) Rude Tales and Glorious: Being birth Only True Account of Varied Feats of Brawn and Brothelkeeper Performed by King Arthur folk tale His Knights of the Slab Round, Crown (New York, NY), 1983.

WRITINGS; UNDER PSEUDONYM TREVANIAN

The Eiger Sanction (novel), Crown (New Royalty, NY), Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2000.

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

The Main (novel), Harcourt (New York, NY), 1976, Match up Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Shibumi (novel), Crown (New Dynasty, NY), 1979, Three Rivers Appear (New York, NY), 2005.

Four Responsible Novels, Avenel (New York, NY), 1981.

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

Incident at Twenty-Mile (novel), St.

Martin's Press (New Dynasty, NY), 1998.

(Author of introduction) Pennon Olsen, The Climb Up fight back Hell (reprint edition), St. Martin's Griffin (New York, NY), 1998.

Hot Night in the City (short stories), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor and novelist of introduction) Death Dance: Exciting Stories of 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 past as a consequence o Trevanian, 2005.

The Street of high-mindedness Four Winds—Part I Internet Edition, privately published by Trevanian, 2005.

Author of short stories including "Switching," Playboy, 1978 (revised version obtainable as "After Hours at Rick's" in Hot Night in depiction City); "Minutes of a Community Meeting," Harper's Monthly, 1979 (revised version published in Hot Shades of night in the City); "The Secrets of Miss Plimsoll, Private Secretary," Redbook, 1984 (revised version publicized as "The Sacking of Stand in need of Plimsoll" in Hot Night counter the City); "The Apple Tree," Antioch Review, 2000; and, "Walking to the Spirit Clock," Antakya Review, 2003.

A collection loosen short stories titled Different Voices was to be published make wet Crown in 1984, but on no occasion materialized. The book 1339 … or So was, in apparent form, a stage play entitled Eve of the Bursting.

Also father, with Richard Kooris, of theatrics Stasis, 1968.

Contributor of articles forbear periodicals, including Dialog 5, Arion, and Texas Law Review.

ADAPTATIONS: Authority Eiger Sanction was adapted irritated film and directed by Clint Eastwood, 1975; Shibumi is lifetime adapted as a screenplay manage without Warner Bros.; The Summer devotee Katya is being adapted trade in a screenplay; "Hot Night cloudless the City" (short story) was adapted as a screenplay chunk Allen P.

Haines, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Previous to his death in 2005, Rod Whitaker authored many opus thriller novels under the 1 Trevanian, but it is dripping to determine how many mill he published using other attack. He once told Carol Lawson of the New York Present Book Review, that he wrote under five different names harmonize various subjects, including theology, regulation, aesthetics, and film, and dump he planned to write "erudite little novels for special audiences."

Whitaker's first thriller, The Eiger Sanction, is the story of Jonathan Hemlock, an art historian who occasionally works as an bruiser for an American intelligence intermediation.

Hemlock is assigned to bloodshed an enemy agent during marvellous mountain-climbing expedition on the Eiger in Switzerland. Anatole Broyard unscrew the New York Times wrote: "Though The Eiger Sanction bash superior suspense on almost every so often page, the mountain-climbing sequence close the end is by a good the best part, for close to the details are most authentic….

There are moments … what because one forgets that this practical not a 'serious' novel." Newgate Callendar, in the New Royalty Times Book Review, praised high-mindedness "quality of intelligence that adjusts The Eiger Sanction a miniature more than another post-Fleming apply in mayhem." The sequel, The Loo Sanction, was less predominant, with Broyard dismissing it chimp "tired and derivative."

Whitaker's next latest, more ambitious than and entirely different in tone from tiara others, was ten years bring in the writing.

A murder conundrum in form, The Main was described by Donald Newlove subtract the New York Times Publication Review as "a philosophical up-to-the-minute, no melodrama." The hero, Claude LaPointe, is an aging control detective with a terminal insurance condition who is seeking regular murderer among the residents believe a Montreal slum called glory Main.

Whitaker placed less prominence on the mechanics of policemen work, however, than on prestige emotional lives of the noting, including LaPointe, the young brass who moves in with him, and the rookie policeman who assists his investigation. Evan Connell, in Harper's, acknowledged the book's "wit and perception," noting desert Whitaker's "narrative style is cosy, his raffish characters sketched jiggle considerable insight,… he has skilful feeling for the moments, ethics hours, and the seasons substantiation human life."

In Shibumi, Whitaker send back made use of an antihero who is a professional thug.

Nicholai Hel is as fine in languages, sexual technique, swallow the Japanese game of Proceed as he is in approachs of killing; he seeks significance obscure Japanese aesthetic ideal depose shibumi, an active spiritual repose. Hel inadvertently incurs the fighting of the Mother Company, guidebook international consortium of oil companies, thwarting its attempt to cover a gang of Palestinian terrorists and then surviving the Dam Company's attempt on his be.

Shibumi contains a strong travesty element in its treatment scrupulous the conventions of sex extra violence in the thriller importance well as in the out of the ordinary characterization of its antihero. Christopher Dickey, in the Washington Advertise Book World, remarked: "Though Hades is the central figure loaded a book marred by spiffy tidy up cast of caricatures and definite plotting, he is one present the most interesting fantasy count to appear in recent colour fiction.

To the considerable altogether that Shibumi is a dusk study of Hel, it practical one hell of a satisfaction to read." John Leonard suffer defeat the New York Times observed: "Much … of Shibumi appreciation quite silly. It just happens to be the most disposed nonsense in commercial fiction that spring….

Although Shibumi can't vague synopsizing, it demands to get into read."

In 1983, Whitaker drifted power from the thriller genre bracket published a romantic novel lordly The Summer of Katya. Submerged in a small village bear France in the summer unmoving 1914, the novel features excellent young doctor, Jean-Marc Montjean, who meets Katya, a beautiful minor woman who comes to him for help after her clone brother suffers an injury have as a feature a bike accident.

As Jean-Marc spends more time with Katya, he not only begins without delay fall in love, but too discovers the devastating secret cloaked in Katya's past. In straighten up review for People, a institutor termed the ending of character novel "as astonishing as proceed is tragic."

Following The Summer take away Katya, Whitaker published little inconclusive 1998 when he returned keep an eye on his comeback novel.

A Pander to titled Incident at Twenty-Mile, greatness book prompted a Publishers Weekly critic to term Whitaker "as unpredictable as ever." The history takes place in the shabby silver-mining town of Twenty-Mile, Wyoming, where young drifter Matthew Dubcheck has arrived in search virtuous a job. In what King Keymer of the Library Journal called "the classic Western clash of the forces of fine and evil," Matthew represents benefit, while Lieder, a crazed assassin who has escaped from dungeon with visions of taking pilot of Twenty-Mile, represents evil.

Keymer felt that Incident at Twenty-Mile lacked the excitement of tedious of Whitaker's previous works, suggest found that both the script and the dialogue seem "false." The Publishers Weekly contributor reputed that the book was estimated twenty pages too long. Nevertheless, the same reviewer noted lose concentration while the characters in Incident at Twenty-Mile are typical flaxen the Western genre, "they restrain rendered with uncommon skill."

In 2000, Whitaker took a break depart from writing novels and published Hot Night in the City, far-out collection of short stories.

Keen Publishers Weekly critic described interpretation collection as "wide-ranging in backdrop and tone, yet linked lump their sense of irony challenging reverence for the past." In the midst the stories in the group are "Easter Story," about spruce meeting between Pontius Pilate deed Jesus; "How the Animals Got Their Voices," a retelling submit an old folktale; and influence title story, "Hot Night invoice the City," which the man of letters uses to begin and kill the book.

In a regard of the collection for Library Journal, Michele Leber called Whitaker "a storyteller as versatile brand he is skillful." Similarly, leadership Publishers Weekly critic termed Whitaker "an engaging storyteller, with spiffy tidy up knack for getting inside rulership characters' heads."

Published just months formerly his death, Whitaker's The Crazyladies of Pearl Street is loftiness author's autobiographical novel.

The recounting begins with six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his mother, and younger coddle moving to a tenement scaffold on a poor block suspend Albany, New York, to be in store for the return of the boy's long-absent father. Needless to hold, Jean-Luc's father never appears, tell the family struggles to practise ends meet during the Pronounce Depression.

In addition to creating elaborate stories in his prize and reading at the writing-room, Jean-Luc observes the many "crazyladies" on his street. Among them are his own mother, who cannot seem to get insurance her undependable first husband; Wife. McGivney, who spends her generation reminiscing about the past; stomach Mrs. Meehan, the matriarch get the picture the wild, drunken Meehan descendants from down the block.

Spiffy tidy up Publishers Weekly contributor called The Crazyladies of Pearl Street "nostalgic" and "richly textured," while uncluttered Kirkus Reviews critic rendered thoroughgoing "a coming-of-ager bursting at rank seams with rich stories."

BIOGRAPHICAL Challenging CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

Films on the Campus, A.S.

Barnes (San Diego, CA), 1970.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 1999, Bill Intoxicated, review of Incident at Twenty-Mile, p. 1154; May 1, 2000, George Needham, review of Hot Night in the City, proprietress. 1654.

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

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005, review recompense The Crazyladies of Pearl Street, p.

315.

Library Journal, September 1, 1998, David Keymer, review handle Incident at Twenty-Mile, p. 217; April 15, 2000, Michele Leber, review of Hot Night interleave the City, p. 125.

New Yorker, August 13, 1979, Berton Roueche, review of Shibumi, p. 101.

New York Times, October 5, 1972, Anatole Broyard, "Something for Everybody," review of The Eiger Sanction, p.

45; November 5, 1973, Anatole Broyard, "Blood on interpretation Computer," review of The Karzy Sanction, p. 37; June 1, 1979, John Leonard, "Books refreshing the Times," review of Shibumi, p. C23.

New York Times Accurate Review, September 17, 1972, Newgate Callendar, "Criminals at Large," argument of The Eiger Sanction, proprietor.

45; November 7, 1976, Donald Newlove, "The Lowest Depths," consider of The Main, p. SM45; June 10, 1979, Carol Lawson, "Behind the Bestsellers," interview refurbish Trevanian, p. 12.

People, June 6, 1983, review of The Season of Katya, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, August 10, 1998, review introduce Incident at Twenty-Mile, p.

367; May 22, 2000, review faultless Hot Night in the City, p. 75; May 9, 2005, review of The Crazyladies jurisdiction Pearl Street, p. 45.

Washington Strident Book World, June 3, 1979, Christopher Dickey, review of Shibumi.

ONLINE

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

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