Evan Connell (Evan Shelby Jr Connell) Biography

American novelist and short-story writer, born in Kansas City, educated at Dartmouth College, University of Kansas, Stanford University, and Columbia University. Connell's early writings were in the short story form; his first collection, The Anatomy Lesson and Other Stories (1957), with its ironic satires of the provinciality and cultural aridity of Midwestern life, and At the Crossroads (1965), demonstrate his mastery of the contemporary short story. St Augustine's Pigeon: The Selected Stories (1980) includes sixteen stories dating from the 1950s. Connell's novels include Mrs Bridge (1959) and its ‘companion piece’, Mr Bridge (1969), both trenchant and ironic explorations of suburban life in the USA; The Patriot (1960) recounts the experiences of an American Air Force officer in the Second World War (Connell served as a naval aviator during 1943–5); and Diary of a Rapist (1966), which narrates an almost existential retreat into the self and is frequently disturbing for its insights into sexual violence. Connell's first published verse was the long single poem, Notes From a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel (1963), though his second collection, Points for a Compass Rose (1973), is more representative of his strengths as a poet. Other notable works are The Connoisseur (1974), Double Honeymoon (1976), and The Alchymist's Journal (1991); A Long Desire (1979) and The White Lantern (1980) are collections of essays.