Truly an Extraordinary Thing!

The great writer Robert Stone recently passed away. I read a few of his novels, Dog Soldiers, Hall of Mirrors, Children of the Light, and one of his memoirs - Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties (I am re-reading this one right now!).

He was a contemporary of Ken Kesey, another one the great minds and characters that emerged in the 60's. Reading one of Stone's books puts you in another frame of mind, another world. A world where there are no clunky sentences, where every line is suffused with intelligence and a grounded, real-world, hard-won poetry. There are also haunting, hallucinogenic touches too. Stone was one of the early users of psychotropic drugs and that was part of his consciousness too.

To me, Robert Stone was a model, an exemplar of what a novelist was - an engaged spirit and mind, alive in the world, seeing it all, taking it in, transforming it and putting it on paper. All of his work has substance and weight, and intelligence and beauty. And his books demonstrate the incredible gift of fiction writing - you get to live in someone else's consciousness for a time. It is truly an extraordinary thing.