Fielding Dawson Biography

American novelist, short-story writer, and painter, born in New York City; he grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri and was educated at Black Mountain College from 1949 to 1953. The Black Mountain Book (1970; revised and expanded, 1991) remains the most valuable memoir of the college during its Olson era and the experience clearly set the agenda for Dawson's future development as a writer. A master of the kind of kinetic writing promulgated by and the Beats, Dawson is also a Jungian who pays great attention to the material presented in his dreams. This gives his work a steady but flexible centre and helps to explain much of the intellectual and emotional engagement in his writing. He is a prolific writer whose novels include Open Road (1970), The Mandalay Dream (1971), A Great Day For a Ballgame (1973), and the Penny Lane series (1977–81). His collections of stories include Krazy Kat/The Unveiling (1969), The Dream/Thunder Road (1972), The Sun Rises Into the Sky (1973), and The Man Who Changed Overnight (1976). The Orange in the Orange (1994) comprises a novella and two stories which, like many of his other books, are closely interrelated. Like Kerouac, he is deeply sensitive to the world of the child and, again like Kerouac, recognizes the degree to which that world persists into the world of the adult.