Noone, John 1936-

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NOONE, John 1936-

PERSONAL:

Born February 7, 1936, in Darlington, England. Education: King's College, University of Durham.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER:

Author and educator. Military service: Durham Light Infantry, 1954-56.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction, for The Man with the Chocolate Egg; Arts Council Award, for The Night of Accomplishment.

WRITINGS:

The Man with the Chocolate Egg, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1966.

The Night of Accomplishment, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1974.

The Man Behind the Iron Mask, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1988.

SIDELIGHTS:

John Noone taught English for several years at universities in North Africa and Japan before writing his first novel, The Man with the Chocolate Egg. This book, which brought Noone considerable acclaim, tells the story of a young British soldier who attempts, unsuccessfully, to deliver a stolen hand grenade (the chocolate egg of the title) to his terrorist brother. Critics compared the book, which juxtaposes vividly realistic segments against boldly surrealistic ones, with the work of film directors Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni. As a contributor for Dictionary of Literary Biography wrote, the novel "has the tension, suspense, and air of foreboding of a first-rate psychological thriller." The imagery, as the critic noted, emphasizes the grotesque and the violent, including images of crucifixion, blood, and violent death. A writer for Sunday Times observed that the novel "depicts the heavy coldness of horror so accurately it is a relief to be able to close it and look around." The Man with the Chocolate Egg won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction.

Noone's second novel, The Night of Accomplishment, a mix of autobiography, fiction, and myth, centers on Luke, who is described as the author of The Man with the Chocolate Egg. Luke—who, like Noone, is a lecturer in Kyoto—is now trying to write another book titled Proteus. But things are going badly for Luke; he cannot concentrate on his art; physical problems leave him immobilized; and an illicit love affair threatens his marriage. "Noone writes with intensity and intelligence about the complex interrelationships between an artist's life and his work and about the need to destroy in order to create," wrote the Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor. The Night of Accomplishment received an Arts Council Award.

In his third book, Noone departed from fiction to explore the history of the anonymous prisoner who, during the reign of Louis XIV, was ordered to wear an iron mask to hide his identity. Made famous by Alexandre Dumas's novel The Man in the Iron Mask, this prisoner has been the subject of much historical speculation, yet his identity has never been definitively established. Noone's book The Man Behind the Iron Mask examines the mystery and offers a fresh interpretation of the evidence. As Noone explained to Eden Ross Lipson in New York Times Book Review, he had originally set out to write another novel, which he had begun years earlier while teaching in Japan. Noone had moved to Cannes to complete the manuscript. From his apartment he could see the famous prison on the island of Sainte-Marguerite where the Man in the Iron Mask was believed to have been incarcerated. He began to think about this prisoner so much that he eventually abandoned the novel, which was going to be about "double identity or identical appearance—two people with the same face or one face with two personalities" and set about researching and writing The Man Behind the Iron Mask. Critics admired the book's treatment of its intriguing subject. A reviewer in Trenton Times described the book as "an engrossing non-fiction tale of mystery, money, greed, intrigue, cover-up and myth." In New York Times Book Review, Joan DeJean noted that Noone "is excellent at setting scenes and providing the historical information necessary to understand the sometimes complicated plots he unravels." The critic added that "In all his incarnations, the man behind the iron mask is the stuff of high (melo)drama, and Mr. Noone makes the most of this sometimes outrageous material. In addition, he never fails to highlight those aspects of the story that show the power of rumor to reduce someone to anonymity while appearing to be driven by the desire to identify."