Richard Gustave Stern (February 25, 1928 – January 24, 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, and educator. Stern was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

on February 25, 1928. He attended the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the Public university, public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referre ...

from which he graduated

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

and

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

in 1947. After a year working in Indiana, Florida and New York City, he went to

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

where he received an MA in English Literature. In 1949, he taught as a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the peopl ...

Versailles, France Versailles ( , ) is a commune in the department of the Yvelines, Île-de-France, known worldwide for the Château de Versailles and the gardens of Versailles, which is designated an UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Located in the western suburbs ...

. From 1950 to 1951 he was an assistant professor and taught at

Heidelberg University Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest unive ...

. From 1952 to 1954, he was a member of the

Iowa Writer's Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a graduate-level creative writing program. At 89 years, it is the oldest writing program offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in the United States. Its acceptance rate is between 2 ...

and received a PhD from the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...

in 1954. After a year teaching at

Connecticut College Connecticut College (Conn) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. Originally chartered as Thames College, it was founded in 1911 as the state's only women's colle ...

in New London, he came to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

where he taught from 1955 to 2002. He retired as Helen A Regenstein Professor of English and American Literature in 2004. During his tenure at the University of Chicago, Stern was allegedly involved in the "suppression" of the "beat edition" of the ''Chicago Review'' (winter edition of 1958). At the time the ''Chicago Review'' was a student/faculty literary publication published by the University of Chicago. The editor then was

Irving Rosenthal Irving Rosenthal (December 5, 1895 – December 27, 1973) was an amusement company owner who, along with his brother Jack Rosenthal, operated the Palisades Amusement Park near Cliffside Park and Fort Lee, New Jersey, from 1934 until its closi ...

. The "beat edition" of the ''Review'' was to include excerpts from ''

Naked Lunch ''Naked Lunch'' (first published as ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. The novel does not follow a clear linear plot, but is instead structured as a series of non-chronological "routines". Many of thes ...

'', by

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major Postmodern literature, postmodern author who influen ...

, and a few

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

stories. According to Rosenthal, Stern, along with Joshua Taylor, another faculty member, wanted to suppress the winter issue, being himself "so quick to protect the administration." (For reference to the case of censorship See ''The Beats, A Literary Reference'', by Matt Theado, pp. 103, 104, 105, under the chapter titled "The ''Chicago Review'' and a Case of Censorship.") Stern's own account of the "so-called suppression" appeared in "How I Think I Got to Think the Way I Think" in ''The Republic of Letters'' (reprinted in ''Still on Call'', Stern's "orderly miscellany"). It recounts Stern's successful attempt not only to save the review (the University President at the time,

Lawrence A. Kimpton Lawrence Alpheus Kimpton (1910–1973) was an American philosopher and academic administrator, serving as the 6th president of the University of Chicago from 1951 to 1960. He earned a B.A. at Stanford and a Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell Universit ...

, wished to stop funding the journal) but to keep the following issue from dropping any of the pieces (of ''Naked Lunch'' and other "beat" works) that had been accepted. Rosenthal and Paul Carroll, the ''Review'''s co- editors, founded ''Big Table'', using submissions which Stern and the other student editors claimed belonged to the ''Review''. (Oddly, Stern was invited to and did read at a fund-raiser for ''Big Table'' and published what he read in its second issue.) Furthermore, the previous issue of the ''Review'' included an excerpt from ''Naked Lunch'' along with work by other Beats. In 1960, Stern published his first novel, ''Golk,'' then the novels ''Europe or Up and Down with Baggish and Schreiber'' (1961), ''In Any Case'' (1962), ''Stitch'' (1965), ''Other Men's Daughters'' (1973), ''Natural Shocks'' (1978), ''A Father's Words'' (1986), and ''Pacific Tremors'' (2001). There also have been short story collections culminating in his collected stories, ''Almonds to Zhoof'' published in 2004, his 21st book. Of this last book, a reviewer in the New Republic called Stern "the best American author of whom you have never heard." This indeed has been the tag associated with Mr. Stern for the last quarter of a century. "I was a has-been before I'd been a been," was a well-known self-deprecation as was the word of

Richard Schickel Richard Warren Schickel (February 10, 1933 – February 18, 2017) was an American film historian, journalist, author, documentarian, and film and literary critic. He was a film critic for ''Time'' from 1965–2010, and also wrote for '' ...

that Mr. Stern "was almost famous for not being famous". Stern published another collection of essays, What is What Was, in 2002. Like his other essay collections, this one demonstrates that his astute observations in fiction are equal to, and derived from, his acute views on news and culture. In 1985, Stern received the Medal of Merit for the Novel, awarded to a novelist every six years by the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

. Among his many other awards was the Heartland Award for the best work of non-fiction which Stern received for his memoir, ''Sistermony,'' published in 1995. Stern has been praised by many of the great writers and critics of the last fifty years, among them

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, dy ...

Flannery O'Connor Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. O'Connor was a Southern writer who of ...

Howard Nemerov Howard Nemerov (February 29, 1920 – July 5, 1991) was an American poet. Nemerov was the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis. He was twice ...

, Thomas Berger,

Hugh Kenner William Hugh Kenner (January 7, 1923 – November 24, 2003) was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor. His studies on Modernist literature often analyzed the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Samuel Beckett. His major study of ...

Sven Birkerts Sven Birkerts (born 21 September 1951) is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book ''The Gutenberg Elegies'' (1994), which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other tec ...

, and

Richard Ellmann Richard David Ellmann, Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (March 15, 1918 – May 13, 1987) was an American Literary criticism, literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and W. B. Yeats, William Butler Yeats. ...

, as well as his close friends Tom Rogers,

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...

Donald Justice Donald Rodney Justice (August 12, 1925 – August 6, 2004) was an American poet and teacher of creative writing who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980. Early life and education Justice was born on August 12, 1925, in Miami. He attended the ...

, and

Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (; March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophical ...

(see Stern's essay "Glimpse, Encounter, Acquaintance, Friendship" in Sewanee Review, Winter 2009). He also enjoyed literary acquaintances and friendships with such figures as

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...

Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, Prose, prose writer, Memoir, memoirist, and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway as well as her communist views and political activism. She was black ...

, and

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

. Some of Stern's students at the University of Chicago went on to become distinguished writers themselves such as

Douglas Unger Douglas Arthur Unger (born June 27, 1952) is an American novelist. Life and work Unger was born in Moscow, Idaho. He received a BA from the University of Chicago in 1973 and a MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 19 ...

Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (February 4, 1932 – October 5, 2024) was an American novelist, Short story, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation ...

, Austin Wright, Campbell McGrath, Peter LaSalle, and Alane Rollings, as well as the well-known journalists

Seymour Hersh Seymour Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer ...

, David Brooks and Mike Taibbi. At 80, Stern continued to write, and his books remain in print through Northwestern University Press and University of Chicago Press. From 2006 onwards he maintained a blog with The New Republic. The most recent book about Stern and his work was published in 2001: ''The Writings of Richard Stern: The Education of an Intellectual Everyman'', by David Garrett Izzo (McFarland Publishing). See also James Schiffer's study, ''Richard Stern'', published by Twayne/Macmillan in 1993.

Bibliography

Novels

* ''Golk'' (1960) * ''Europe, or Up and Down with Baggish and Schreiber'' (1961) * ''In Any Case'' (1962) aka ''The Chaleur Network'' * ''Stitch'' (1965) * ''Other Men’s Daughters'' (1973) * ''Natural Shocks'' (1978) * ''A Father’s Words'' (1986) * ''Pacific Tremors'' (2001)

Short fiction

* ''Teeth, Dying and Other Matters'' (1964) * ''1968: A Short Novel, an Urban Idyll, Five Stories, and Two Trade Notes'' (1970) * ''Packages'' (1980) * ''Noble Rot: Stories 1949-1988'' (1989) * ''Shares, a Novel in Ten Pieces and Other Fictions'' (1992) * ''Almonds to Zhoof: Collected Stories'' (2005)

Other

* ''Honey and Wax: The Pleasures and Powers of Narrative'' (1966) (editor) * ''The Books in Fred Hampton’s Apartment'' (1973) * ''The Invention of the Real'' (1982) * ''The Position of the Body'' (1986) * ''One Person and Another: On Writers and Writing'' (1993) * ''A Sistermony'' (1995) * ''What Is What Was: Essays, Stories, Poems'' (2002) * ''Still On Call'' (2010)

References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Stern, Richard G 1928 births 2013 deaths Deaths from cancer in Georgia (U.S. state) 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American male novelists Harvard University alumni Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni Novelists from New York City American male short story writers 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers