John Knowles
From Free net encyclopedia
JackyR (Talk | contribs)
/* Selected works */ lk to work
Next diff →
Current revision
John Knowles (September 16, 1926 - November 29, 2001, Fairmont, West Virginia) was an American novelist, best known for A Separate Peace.
A 1945 graduate of Philips Exeter Academy, Knowles graduated from Yale University in 1949. A Separate Peace is widely believed to be based upon Knowles' experiences at Exeter while he was having a midlife crisis, and the setting, "The Devon School," is a thinly veiled fictionalization thereof.
Gore Vidal in his memoirs Palimpsest, acknowledges that he and Knowles went to Phillips Exeter together. Vidal claims that Knowles told him that the character Brinker is based on Vidal. "We have been friends for many years now," Vidal says, "and I admire the novel that he based on our school days, A Separate Peace."
Knowles' other significant works are Morning in Antibes, Double Vision: American Thoughts Abroad, Indian Summer, The Paragon, and Peace Breaks Out, although these were not as well received as A Separate Peace. He is the author of seven novels, a book on travel, and a collection of stories. Mr. Knowles is a winner of the William Faulkner Award and The Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He used to lecture widely to university audiences.
Selected works
- A Separate Peace; a novel, London, Secker & Warburg, 1959; New York, Macmillan Co., 1960
- Morning in Antibes; a novel, New York, Macmillan, 1962
- Double Vision; American Thoughts Abroad, New York, Macmillan, 1964
- Indian Summer, New York, Random House, 1966
- Phineas; six stories, New York, Random House, 1968
- The Paragon; a novel, New York, Random House, c. 1971
- Spreading Fires, New York, Random House, 1974
- A Vein of Riches, Boston, Little Brown, 1978
- Peace Breaks Out, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981
- A Stolen Past, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983
- The Private Life of Axie Reed, New York : Jesse Grunberg, 1986