Anderson, Robert 1964–

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Anderson, Robert 1964–

PERSONAL: Born 1964, in Rapid City, SD. Education: Attended University of Minnesota.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Ballantine Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer. Has also worked as a cook.

AWARDS, HONORS: Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction, University of Georgia Press, for Ice Age.

WRITINGS:

Ice Age (short stories), University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 2000.

Little Fugue (novel), Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Robert Anderson's first published book, the short story collection Ice Age, was the 2000 winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award. The book's tales feature "absurd situations rendered through biting satire," Bonnie Smothers explained in Booklist, with "each story inhabiting a surreal landscape." The tales frequently draw on famous historical figures for inspiration: the first, "Mother's Tongue," is set inside the mind of American writer Norman Mailer, while "Schism" includes as characters both fourteenth-century Catholic saint Catherine of Siena and twentieth-century composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Other stories include "The Name of the Dead," in which the wife of a recently killed mobster pours out her story to a bartender; and "Dead and the Maid," about a poor woman from Texas who subsists by charging the state 300 dollars per body to use her land as a potter's field for burying the corpses of those with no one to claim them. The former story is "a beautifully executed dramatic monologue," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor, adding that Anderson's "language throughout is lush and poetic." However, according to Library Journal reviewer Mary Szczesiul, "What distinguishes Anderson's flawless writings is his ability to get inside his characters."

Anderson's novel Little Fugue also uses historical figures to advance its story. In this instance, those historical figures are authors Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Assia Wevill. Hughes and Plath were married for almost nine years, before Hughes left Plath for Wevill, his mistress at the time. Not long after, in 1963, Plath committed suicide at age thirty. Hughes and Wevill remained a couple and tried to forge a life together following that tragedy, but six years later Wevill also committed suicide, even using the same method as Plath. The narrator of Little Fugue, also named Robert Anderson despite being eighteen years older than the author, finds his life intertwined with the stories of Hughes, Plath, and Wevill after one of the nuns who teaches at his high school gives him Plath's poetry collection Ariel. Little Fugue jumps back and forth between the lives of Plath, Hughes, Wevill, and Robert and the two eras sometimes overlap. Throughout the novel, Robert attempts to come to terms with the chaos in his own life in New York as well as with his obsession with Plath and her work. His fixation on this tragic menage a trois helps him to get through the 1968 Columbia University riots, the decline of New York during the 1970s, the rise of the heroin subculture (in which Robert becomes enmeshed), AIDS, and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. "The Plath/Hughes story has been told and retold almost to death," noted a Publishers Weekly critic, but "Anderson … breathes brash new life into the iconic tale in this hypnotic and provocative novel." People critic Porter Shreve also found Little Fugue "disarmingly original," and Booklist contributor Allison Block declared it an "astute debut" that is "drizzled with dark humor."