Sawyer-Laucanno, Christopher 1951–

(Christopher Sawyer Laucanno, Christopher Sawyer)

PERSONAL: Born January 4, 1951, in San Mateo, CA. Ethnicity: "Spanish-American." Education: Attended Southwestern College, Chula Vista, CA, 1968–70; University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A., 1971; Brandeis University, M.A., 1975, Ph.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES: Office—Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, 14N-234, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Sourcebooks, Inc., 1935 Brookdale Rd., Ste. 139, Naperville, IL 60563. E-mail—csl@mit.edu.

CAREER: Human Factors Research, Inc., Goleta, CA, field researcher, 1973–74; Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, part-time instructor in French and Spanish, 1974–76; Dean Junior College, Franklin, MA, instructor in foreign languages and English as a second language, 1977–80; Time-Life Educational Systems Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, staff writer, 1980–82; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, lecturer in English as a second language, 1982–90, writer-in-residence, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, 1990–. Meiji Gakuin University, instructor, 1981–82; Naropa Institute, writer-in-residence, 1989. McCann-Erickson, former advertising copywriter; has also worked as a carpenter, painter, ghost writer, and freelance technical translator; consultant to Overseas Research and Development, Inc. and Laboratory Technologies Corp.

AWARDS, HONORS: New York Times notable book citation, 1989, for An Invisible Spectator; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1992.

WRITINGS:

(Editor; as Christopher Sawyer) On Wind and Wave: Poems by Children, Seventh Swan Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1970.

English for Daily Living, two volumes, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1980.

Imaginative Situations, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1980.

English Skills Development Course, two volumes, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1981.

Ongoing English: A Basic Course, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1981.

Ongoing English: An Intermediate Course, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1981.

English Communication Workshop: A Video Workbook, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1981.

Curso Tecnico Basico, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1982.

Yamaha Technical Training Course, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1982.

Cases in International Business, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1982.

A Glossary of Business English, Time-Life (Tokyo, Japan), 1983.

Case Studies in International Management, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1985.

(Translator) Destruction of the Jaguar: Poems from the Books of Chilam Balam, City Lights (San Francisco, CA), 1987.

An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles, Ecco (New York, NY), 1990.

(Translator) Federico Garcia Lorca, Barbarous Nights: Legends and the Little Theater, City Lights (San Francisco, CA), 1991.

The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944–1960, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1992.

The World's Words: A Semiotic Reading of Joyce and Rabelais, Alyscamps (London, England), 1993.

(Translator) Rafael Alberti, Concerning the Angels, City Lights (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

(Translator) Demons and Spirits: Contemporary Chol Mayan Chants and Incantations, Alyscamps (London, England), 1997.

(Librettist) The Incident, composed by Richard Robinson, first performed in Atlanta, GA, at Feinstein House, 1998.

Les Mots Anglais (poems), Jensen-Daniels/Talisman House (Jersey City, NJ), 1999.

E.E. Cummings: A Biography, Sourcebooks (Naperville, IL), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Learning to Use Black: Painted Poems, Vol Press (Tokyo, Japan), 1982; Simulation-Gaming in the Late 1980s, edited by D. Crookall and other, Pergamon (Elmsford, NY), 1987; Simulation, Gaming, and Language Learning, edited by D. Crookall and R. Oxford, Harper (New York, NY), 1990; and Studies in Poetics: Essays in Memory of Krystyna Pomorska, edited by E. Semeka, Slavica (Columbus, OH), 1995.

Contributor of articles, poems, stories, and translations to periodicals, including Substance, Nexus, Twentieth Century Literature, Talisman, American Poetry Review, City Lights Review, Translation, Negative Capability, and Bombay Gin.

SIDELIGHTS: Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno began his writing career with books for Time-Life in Japan and later, as a writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, started producing literary studies and biographies. He once related to CA: "Had I not gone to Japan in 1980, I would not be a writer today. As a staff writer for Time-Life Educational Systems, producing English language texts for the Japanese market, I was suddenly forced to spend the better part of the day in front of the typewriter, pounding out page after page of prose. Although most of the English books written over those two years were not terribly exciting, the daily practice of writing created, in fact, an identity as a producer. Sheer discipline, of course, can't substitute for talent, but talent without discipline doesn't add up to much either."

Writing about Sawyer's first biography, An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles, Anatole Broyard asserted in the New York Times Book Review: "Mr. Bowles may have got the biographer he deserves." Paul Bowles was an expatriate writer and composer who achieved critical acclaim for his first novel, The Sheltering Sky, in 1949. A protégé of Aaron Copeland and Virgil Thomson, Bowles is equally important as a composer. He spent much of his life traveling, and associated with such people as Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Tennessee Williams. His own autobiography, Without Stopping, was called "Without Telling" by his friend William Burroughs because it reveals so little, reported Broyard. In a Chicago Tribune Books review, Nicholas Delbanco contended that "An Invisible Spectator reads like a kind of gloss on Without Stopping. Incident after incident in the former is a paraphrase of the latter." However, Scott Symons, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail, believed that Sawyer-Laucanno "has told his story skillfully and compassionately. He has given us the Paul Bowles that Bowles declined to give in his own autobiography…. He has given us that 'invisible spectator' who saw it all and calmly warned us."

Sawyer explained to CA: "Although I cut my writing teeth producing language texts, since the mid-1980s I have devoted most of my energy to my first love: literature. The transition came with my biography of Paul Bowles, An Invisible Spectator. For that book I read every book, letter, article, and scrap of information by or about Bowles that I could gather. I also journeyed several times to Tangier, Morocco, to talk with Bowles, and I criss-crossed the country interviewing those who had known him over the years. This, for me, was a labor of love. I had been a devoted fan of Bowles for years and hoped with my biography to illuminate this elusive, but extraordinary writer. I felt then, and still feel, that the book was as much an homage as a biography. I was, therefore, stunned and chagrined when, upon its publication, Bowles denounced my effort. He felt that I had somehow betrayed his trust, even written the book without his consent. To be sure, the biography was not 'authorized' in the traditional sense, yet he had fully cooperated with me, answering innumerable questions. He even wrote a statement that I had permission to write an 'unassisted, synthetic biography.' By 'unassisted' he meant that he would neither actively help nor hinder me; 'synthetic' he defined as information relating to his life from public or private sources. I felt I had followed this understanding in both spirit and letter. Consequently, his protest was a sad surprise.

"Bowles's rejection, however, did not deter me from writing another biographical study, this time of American writers in Paris in the post-World War II era. The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944–1960 was the first book to examine an eclectic and wonderfully talented array of writers who called Paris home between 1944 and 1960. This book was a total delight to write, with active cooperation (and without post-publication repercussions) from all of the still-living major figures profiled in the book. My conclusion from these two excursions into biography: pick subjects you love; learn everything possible about your subjects; follow every lead; do the best you can; tell the truth, even if the truth is not necessarily so well received by your subject(s)."

With The Continual Pilgrimage, Sawyer once again discusses expatriate writers, though this time his subjects are many. When thinking about expatriate American writers in Paris, most people are reminded of the 1920s, when authors such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway lived there. Sawyer, however, points out that post-World War II France also had a thriving community of American writers, including James Baldwin, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Irwin Shaw, Chester Himes, and Richard Wright. These "well-considered literary biographies succeed in capturing an important cultural moment," attested a Publishers Weekly contributor. "On the whole," concluded Alan Ansen in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, "Sawyer-Laucanno makes a good case for the symbiosis of Paris and the American writer."

Returning to the one-author biography, Sawyer published E.E. Cummings: A Biography in 2004. Although the famous poet and painter has been written about before, a Kirkus Reviews critic called Sawyer's addition to the library covering Cummings's work "a major new biography." Although the critic found that Sawyer does not have a critical enough eye about his subject, the reviewer added, "When he abandons his role as apologist, however, the author has many bright things to say about the poems and their gifted creator." A Publishers Weekly contributor similarly described the book as "a nimble biography" that "offers enlightening analyses of Cummings's painting and writing."

"Alongside my career as a biographer," Sawyer told CA, "I have also devoted myself to translation. Here my goals are much the same: to interest readers in writers or in writing they may not be familiar with due to language limitations."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 16, 1989, Scott Symons, review of An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2004, review of E.E. Cummings: A Biography, p. 796.

New York Times Book Review, August 6, 1989, Anatole Broyard, review of An Invisible Spectator, p. 3.

Publishers Weekly, August 3, 1992, review of The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944–1960, p. 55; August 30, 2004, review of E.E. Cummings, p. 40.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, spring, 1993, Alan Ansen, review of The Continual Pilgrimage, p. 277.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), June 25, 1989, Nicholas Delbanco, review of An Invisible Spectator.

ONLINE

MIT Web site, http://web.mit.edu/ (February 14, 2006), brief biography of Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno.