Stone, Robert

(US, 1937– )

Stone served in the US Navy and briefly joined Ken Kesey's ‘Merry Pranksters’, a group of young artists and writers who rejected mainstream society in favour of hallucinogenics and communal living. He also worked as a journalist and his second novel, Dog Soldiers (1974), draws upon his time as a Vietnam war correspondent. A disillusioned writer returns from Vietnam to an American underworld of narcotics, hippy gangsters, and police corruption. Similarly, A Flag for Sunrise (1981) skilfully blends racy plotting and hard-boiled dialogue to suggest that the West is often more barbaric than the countries it sets out to civilize. In Outerbridge Reach (1992) Stone casts his critical eye over contemporary America, while the more demanding Damascus Gate (1998) plumbs the psychology of religious and political extremism in 1990s' Israel.

Don DeLillo, Ken Kesey, John Irving  BH