Conversations with Robert Stone

This collection gathers conversations with Robert Stone (1937–2015), the novelist whose career started with A Hall of Mirrors, a portrait of New Orleans's rough underside during the 1960s. Across his work, Stone set stories in places where the country's social fabric was coming apart and tension was constantly high. Dog Soldiers follows the Vietnam War and the drug trade. A Flag for Sunrise looks at revolt in Central America. Children of Light satirizes the shallow priorities of Hollywood. Outerbridge Reach examines existential anxiety and the pull toward a heroic escape from it. Damascus Gate uses the rivalry among faiths in Jerusalem as its engine, and Death of the Black-Haired Girl turns on friction between a university town and its surroundings during the culture wars of the twenty-first century.

In these interviews, Stone discusses how he built his novels and answers pointed questions about his major books with a frankness that makes them especially useful for anyone interested in how fiction gets made. He also talks about his own life: a mother who suffered from schizophrenia, a period of service in the navy, his association with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and his firsthand view of the emergence of the counterculture. The book follows him from the publication of A Hall of Mirrors until his death in 2015, when he was a central presence in American literature.