Leland, Christopher T. 1951–

(Christopher Towne Leland)

PERSONAL:

Born October 17, 1951, in Tulsa, OK; son of Benjamin Towne (an engineer) and Julia E. (a librarian) Leland. Ethnicity: "Mongrel." Education: Pomona College, B.A., 1973; University of California, San Diego, M.A., 1980, Ph.D., 1982.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Detroit, MI. Office—Department of English, Wayne State University, 51 W. Warren Ave., Detroit, MI 48214. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, NJ, member of adjunct faculty, 1980; Pomona College, Claremont, CA, visiting lecturer in composition, creative writing, and literature, 1982; University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, visiting lecturer in composition, creative writing, and literature, 1983; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Briggs-Copeland Lecturer, 1983-88; Bennington College, Bennington, VT, member of faculty, 1988-90; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, professor of English, 1990—. U.S. Information Agency lecturer in Argentina, 1986.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association of America, Associated Writing Programs, Poets and Writers.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Rotary fellowship for Argentina, 1974; Fulbright fellowships for Argentina, 1979, 1984, for Argentina and Uruguay, 1989, and for Spain, 1996; fellow of Massachusetts Artists Foundation, 1986; Shane Stevens fiction fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 1987.

WRITINGS:

Mean Time (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 1982.

The Last Happy Men: The Generation of 1922, Fiction, and the Argentine Reality, Syracuse University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Mrs. Randall (novel), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1987.

(Translator) Open Door: Short Stories by Luisa Valenzuela, North Point Press (New York, NY), 1988.

The Book of Marvels (novel), Scribner (New York, NY), 1990.

The Professor of Aesthetics (novel), Zoland Books (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

Letting Loose, Zoland Books (Cambridge, MA), 1996.

The Art of Compelling Fiction: How to Write a Page-Turner, Story Press (Cincinnati, OH), 1998.

The Creative Writer's Style Guide: Rules and Advice for Writing Fiction and Creative Nonfiction, Writer's Digest Books (Cincinnati, OH), 2002.

Work represented in anthologies, including Working Words: A Working Class and Labor Literature Reader, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 2005. Contributor of short stories to periodicals, including Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly, River Walk Journal, Cardinalis: Journal of Ideas, Open Door, and Dogwood Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

In his first novel, Mean Time, Christopher T. Leland relates the story of Dewey Monroe, a man jailed at age twenty for killing a friend who accused his wife of casual infidelity. After serving ten years of "mean time" in a southwestern prison, Dewey returns home to discover that his wife is, indeed, having an affair with the latest hired hand. Dewey "sets about the business of fitting his … unfaithful wife, Carrie, and her current lover, a dark-complected snake-handling fugitive from a Western carnival named Ale, into his plan for revenge," Alan Cheuse observed in the New York Times Book Review.

Although Leland's tale of small town repression, infidelity, and violence is not an unusual one, critics noted that the author distinguishes Mean Time with powerful writing and the skillful capturing of time and place. "The dust and the townspeople make so claustrophobic an atmosphere you feel it, taste it," Caroline Thompson wrote in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "The evocation of this place is Leland's greatest achievement. He's sucked the town right out of the Southwest and plunked it down between these covers…. The auspiciously high level of craftsmanship makes Mean Time an especially impressive beginning [for Leland]." Cheuse called Mean Time "a compelling neo-Faulknerian drama of back country retribution." Despite its well-used plot, the reviewer concluded, the book is "a wickedly lyrical and engrossing first novel, and works some interesting changes in an old theme."

Leland told CA: "I find myself, after some thirty-five years of denial, writing poetry again. Perhaps this is a function of age. In any case, it is a means of waging narrative by other means. Most gratifying of all, I now have a full shelf of books written by my former students."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, October 1, 1982, review of Mean Time.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 28, 1982, Caroline Thompson, review of Mean Time.

New York Times Book Review, January 16, 1983, Alan Cheuse, review of Mean Time.