Crowley, John 1942–

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Crowley, John 1942–

PERSONAL: Born December 1, 1942, in Presque Isle, ME; son of Joseph B. (a doctor) and Patience (Lyon) Crowley; married Laurie Block, 1984; children: two daughters. Education: Indiana University, B.A., 1964.

ADDRESSES: Home—Box 395, Conway, MA 01341.

CAREER: Photographer and commercial artist, 1964–66; fiction writer and freelance writer for films and television, 1966–. Yale University, visiting professor of creative writing.

AWARDS, HONORS: American Book Award nomination, 1980, for Engine Summer; Hugo Award nomination, Nebula Award nomination, and World Fantasy Award, all 1982, all for Little, Big; American Film Festival Award, 1982, for America Lost and Found; World Fantasy Award, 1990, for Great Work of Time; American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for literature; Locus award, for short story "Gone"; Academy Award nomination, 1991, for The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler within Germany 1933–1945, and 1992, for The Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Deep (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1975.

Beasts (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1976.

Engine Summer (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1979.

Little, Big, Bantam (New York, NY), 1981.

Ægypt (first novel in tetralogy), Bantam (New York, NY), 1987.

Great Work of Time (novella), Bantam (New York, NY), 1991.

Love and Sleep (second novel in tetralogy), Bantam (New York, NY), 1994.

Three Novels, Bantam (New York, NY), 1994.

Dæmonomania (third novel in tetralogy), Bantam (New York, NY), 2000.

The Translator, Morrow (New York, NY), 2002.

Otherwise: Three Novels (contains The Deep, Beasts, and Engine Summer), Perennial (New York, NY), 2002.

Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, Morrow (New York, NY), 2005.

OTHER

(Editor, with Howard Kerr and Charles L. Crow) The Haunted Dusk: American Supernatural Fiction, 1820–1920, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1983.

Novelty (short stories), Bantam (New York, NY), 1989.

Antiquities: Seven Stories, Incunabula (Seattle, WA), 1993.

Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction, Perennial (New York, NY), 2004.

Author of screenplays for documentaries, including America Lost and Found, 1979, No Place to Hide, 1982, America and Lewis Hine, 1985, The World of Tomorrow, 1985, Are We Winning Mommy? America and the Cold War, 1986, The World of Tomorrow, 1989, Fit: Episodes in the History of the Body, 1990, The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler within Germany 1933–1945, 1991, Pearl Harbor: Surprise and Remembrance, 1991, The Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II, 1992, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, 1995, and A Morning Sun, 2003.

Work represented in anthologies, including Shadows, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1977; and Elsewhere, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1981. Author of television scripts for America Lost and Found and No Place to Hide, Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Contributor to periodicals, including Omni.

SIDELIGHTS: Author John Crowley has been praised by critics for his thoughtful, finely wrought works of science fiction and fantasy, which include the novels The Deep, Ægypt, Love and Sleep, and Dæmonomania. A successful television writer who has never pandered to popular tastes, Crowley infuses his genre writings with literary quality and "mind-catching philosophical musings," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer of Dæmonomania. Suzanne Keen reported in Commonweal that his characters "are psychologically convincing, an accomplishment that makes the historical and fantastic elements of his [novel Love and Sleep] all the more thrilling." Whether his work visits far planets or local neighborhoods, some critics have suggested, Crowley always challenges the accepted perceptions of things and offers multi-layered mysteries for his characters—and his readers—to explore. As a Kirkus Reviews contributor explained it in a review of Dæmonomania, "Crowley's work is a taste well worth acquiring, but you have to work at it."

In a New York Times Book Review piece on Crowley's first novel, The Deep, Gerald Jonas declared that "paraphrase is useless to convey the intensity of Crowley's prose; anyone interested in the risk-taking side of modern science fiction will want to experience it firsthand." Jonathan Dee noted, also in the New York Times Book Review, that Crowley "is an abundantly gifted writer, a scholar whose passion for history is matched by his ability to write a graceful sentence." Some reviewers observed that with his third novel, Engine Summer, Crowley developed more complex plots and characters, and his themes began reflecting the influence of the fantasy genre. Charles Nicol wrote in Saturday Review: "A lyric adventure as concerned with the meaning of actions as with the actions themselves, [Engine Summer] presents a meditative world that should appeal to lovers of the great fantasies. Crowley has published some science fiction previously; here he has gone beyond his genre into that hilly country on the borderlands of literature." Similarly, Crowley's Nebula and Hugo Award nominee Little, Big was described by John Clute in the Washington Post Book World as a "dense, marvelous, magic-realist family chronicle about the end of time and the new world to come."

Novelist Carolyn See, in a review for the Los Angeles Times, commented that Crowley's fifth novel, Ægypt, contains "some extraordinary storytelling." Incorporating fantasy, satire, and philosophical romance, the novel centers on Pierce Moffett, a professor of Renaissance history whose desire to write a book about finding the meaning in life leads him to a mythical area and a mysterious woman. Washington Post Book World contributor Michael Dirda remarked that Ægypt "is clearly a novel where thought speaks louder than action, where people, places and events are at once actual and allegorical…. Crowley wants readers to appreciate his foreshadowings, echoes, bits of odd lore, multiple voices—in the evolution of complex pattern is his art." Dirda also noted, however, that Crowley's narrative is so complex that it can occasionally be confusing. Commenting on this complexity, John Clute, in a review for the New York Times Book Review, suggested that Ægypt provides "a dizzying experience." Ægypt is the first novel in an ambitious tetralogy centering upon the intellectual and personal journey of Moffett.

In Love and Sleep, Crowley continues the tale begun in Ægypt. While Ægypt tells of Moffett's life during the 1960s and 1970s, Love and Sleep frames that period, returning to the 1950s and allowing readers a glimpse of Moffett's Kentucky childhood, a time full of "minor incidents and wonders," according to Washington Post Book Review critic Lawrence Norfolk, before leaping ahead of Ægypt in true sequel fashion. In the novel, Norfolk explained, Crowley hangs his plot upon the speculation that "between the old world of things as they used to be, and the new world of things as they would be instead, there has always fallen a sort of passage time, a chaos of unformed possibilities in which all sorts of manifestations could be witnessed." It has "an interim feel, a sense of its author treading water while the players are maneuvered into position" for the proposed third and fourth segments of the series, Norfolk continued. "As it stands, Love and Sleep is a collection of strange episodes, of hints and premonitions. The ultimate worth of this strange, teasing book hangs on the two yet to be written." Jonathan Dee offered a similar assessment of the work for the New York Times Book Review: while the first section of Love and Sleep "generates a true, expansive sense of human mystery … the novel's own vision, so crystal clear in that opening section, grows woollier and more diffuse" as Moffett's saga continues. Chicago Tribune Books contributor Robert Chatain maintained that the author's mixture of realism and fantasy "is not for every reader," yet the critic added: "to dislike fantasy is not to dismiss Crowley; he's one of the few writers who successfully crosses the razor-thin but definite line between genre fiction and literary fiction." Citing the author's "metaphysical conceits," Chatain concluded of Crowley, "there is no temptation to confuse [his novels] with other fictions; there's really nothing like them."

Dæmonomania continues the Pierce Moffett saga, as magic seeps further into the lives of Moffett and his acquaintances in Faraway Hills, New York. The title refers to a possible case of demonic possession, but the book portends even more massive shifts in what appears to be reality. For his part, Moffett comes to understand that magic once worked, that science has only temporarily halted the potency of magic, and that a "secret history," shared by a select few, actually directs the course of human actions. A Kirkus Reviews critic, while noting that the book will mean more to those who have read its two predecessors, called it "[d]eeply atmospheric, impressively learned, endlessly suggestive."

In 2002 Crowley went in a new direction with his writing, publishing The Translator, a work that "demonstrates to the reader … the escape that poetry and literature can provide in times of trouble," observed Booklist critic Ted Leventhal. Set in 1962, The Transla-tor examines the relationship between Innokenti Falin, an exiled Russian poet, and Kit Malone, an American coed with a troubled past. The pair develop a close friendship, and Malone becomes Falin's translator. When the Cuban Missile Crisis erupts, their relationship is threatened by government officials who have been watching Falin. "Crowley's lovely, effortless writing and his accurate, earnest portraits of Russians make this a sad love story with an important piece of rhetoric at its heart," wrote a contributor in Kirkus Reviews. James Schiff, reviewing The Translator in Book, noted that "this simple and sincere novel, which masterfully renders a moment in history, possesses a certain beauty."

Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction, a 2004 work, contains fifteen tales of the fantastic. In an interview on HarperCollins.com, Crowley remarked that the stories "reflect matters … that have always been of deep interest to me. Among those is the malleability of reality, and what it would be like if it could be altered by human wishes; what goes on in the mind and heart of someone who makes such wishes …; and the open-ended nature of the course of time, that produces unintended consequences, not always good or bad." A Kirkus Reviews contributor deemed Novelties and Souvenirs a "pleasing introduction to a very interesting writer's several 'worlds.'"

Crowley's works are noted for their lyrical, lucid style and diverse, provocative characters. In an interview with Gavin J. Grant on Booksense.com, the author was asked why he writes from such varied points of view. "I'm drawn to characters who seem to perceive the secret history of the world, or see a world-story proceeding, and don't trust themselves—and don't believe that they could know such a thing—but are drawn to it anyway," Crowley responded. "That's been a consistent direction all my writing has taken. I can think of people whose minds are active in that way in almost all the books I've written."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 57, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1982, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1983.

St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Turner, Alice K., and Michael Andre-Driussi, editors, Snake's-Hands: The Fiction of John Crowley, Cosmos Books (Canton, OH), 2003.

PERIODICALS

Analog: Science Fiction/Science Fact, June, 1977; August, 1987; December, 1989.

Atlantic, September, 1994, review of Love and Sleep, p. 112.

Berkshire Sampler, September 13, 1981.

Book, March-April, 2002, James Schiff, review of The Translator, p. 79.

Booklist, February 15, 2002, Ted Leventhal, review of The Translator, pp. 990-991.

Commonweal, December 2, 1994, Suzanne Keen, review of Love and Sleep, p. 26.

Extrapolation, spring, 1990.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1994, review of Love and Sleep; June 15, 2000, review of Dæmonomania, p. 815; February 1, 2002, review of The Translator, p. 121; March 1, 2004, review of Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction, p. 194.

Library Journal, August, 2000, Rachel Singer Gordon, review of Dæmonomania, p. 168.

Locus, August, 1991; September, 1991; May, 2001, pp. 4-5, 66-67; February, 2002, Faren Miller, review of The Translator.

Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1987, Carolyn See, review of Ægypt.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, 1980; December, 1987; January, 1992; June, 2002, Elizabeth Hand, review of The Translator.

New Statesman, November 20, 1987.

New York Review of Science Fiction, July, 1998, Jennifer Stevenson, "Memory and the World of John Crowley," pp. 1, 8-11; August, 1999, Alice K. Turner, "Deep Thoughts: John Crowley's Fifteenth-Century Game of Kings," pp. 1, 4-5, and Michael Andre-Driussi, "John Crowley's Great Blond Beasts," pp. 1, 6-12, and Alice K. Turner, "One Writer's Beginnings: John Crowley's Engine Summer as the Portrait of the Artist," pp. 17-18; October, 1999, Michael Andre-Driussi, "John Crowley," pp. 1, 4-7; January, 2000, Alice K. Turner, "Daily Alice's Childhood; Little, Big for Little Folk," pp. 9-10; October, 2000, Michael Andre-Driussi, "Off the Deep End," pp. 18-19; January, 2002, Sondra Ford Swift, "Pierce Moffett the Ass: Apuleian and Brunonian Theses in John Crowley's Dæmonomania," pp. 1, 6-8; March, 2002, Bill Sheehan, "Life after Ægypt," pp. 12-15.

New York Times Book Review, November 21, 1976, Gerald Jonas, review of The Deep; March 27, 1977; May 20, 1979; March 2, 1986; October 12, 1986; May 3, 1987, pp. 9, 11, John Clute, review of Ægypt; August 14, 1988; May 21, 1989; July 5, 1992; February 6, 1994, review of Antiquities, p. 22; September 4, 1994, Jonathan Dee, review of Love and Sleep, p. 9; September 17, 2000, Jeff Waggoner, review of Dæmonomania, p. 25; June 2, 2002, review of The Translator, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, February 20, 1987; April 14, 1989; August 29, 1994, Robert K.J. Killheffer, "John Crowley: 'I Still Owe a Debt of Gratitude,'" p. 53; July 3, 2000, review of Dæmonomania, p. 53; January 14, 2002, review of The Translator, p. 38; May 24, 2004, p. 50.

Saturday Review, April 14, 1979.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review, January-February, 1982.

Times Literary Supplement, May 28, 1982; November 20-26, 1987, p. 1274.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 18, 1981; June 18, 1989, p. 6; September 11, 1994, Robert Chatain, review of Love and Sleep, pp. 1, 13.

Village Voice, April 5, 2002, Elizabeth Hand, "Angels in America."

Voice Literary Supplement, September, 1994, p. 31.

Washington Post Book World, March 23, 1980; July 26, 1981; October 4, 1981; April 19, 1987, pp. 1, 7, Michael Dirda, review of Ægypt; March 19, 1989; December 6, 1992, review of Little, Big, p. 4; November 28, 1993, review of Antiquities, p. 8; July 10, 1994; August 14, 1994, Lawrence Norfolk, review of Love and Sleep, p. 5; March 24, 2002, Howard Norman, review of The Translator.