New York -- There's not much Robert Stone remembers about his first trip to Baltimore. After all, he was but 17, a raw recruit in the Navy. The young radioman had only a short time in the city before shipping out.
So, like thousands of servicemen before and since, he and some buddies chose the most obvious cultural attraction. They went to the Block.
"All I remember is that a bunch of us went down to East Baltimore Street," the novelist says, as he sits in a friend's East Side apartment, smiling as he recalls the incident. "I can't remember the names of the places, but we did make a few strip joints."
When Robert Stone returns to Baltimore, it will be for a longer period and in more socially acceptable circumstances -- and his credentials will be slightly more impressive. Beginning next spring, he will be a visiting professor of fiction in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, a position well befitting his status as one of the leading American writers -- a reputation bolstered even more by the recent publication of "Outerbridge Reach," his fifth novel, a rich and splendidly written work that has gotten mostly ecstatic reviews ("powerfully Conradian," a reviewer for the New York Times wrote).
The Writing Seminars, in fact, likes Mr. Stone so much that it is recruiting him for a tenured, permanent position; a decision will be made by the university this spring. He would fill the vacancy left by the retirement last year of novelist John Barth, a longtime member of the department, who continues to teach part-time.
"He's always been a very serious writer and takes on very serious themes," says Stephen Dixon, a professor of fiction in the Writing Seminars who has known Mr. Stone since the mid-1960s, when both were in the creative writing program at Stanford University. "He reminds me somewhat of Dostoevski, not only in appearance [Dostoevski was bearded, as is Mr. Stone] but in his work -- the darkness, the people questioning their attitudes."
For his part, Mr. Stone says that when he considered returning to teaching in the past few years -- he's taught at Harvard, Princeton and Amherst, among other places -- Hopkins "was on the short list of places I would consider."
"I liked the people there, and it has an excellent reputation," Mr. Stone, 54, says. "And I was ready to teach again. When they approached me, I was more than willing to listen."
That Mr. Stone would be comfortable teaching at universities might come as a surprise to some fans. For not only has he written some of the most vivid prose about the underside of America, he has also lived that life outside the pages.
For some, he's the embodiment of that romantic and elusive (and possibly erroneous) image of the writer's life: free-wheeling, at the center of the storm, down there with the hustlers and life's losers and those who have committed no other sin than to have been left behind.
There's a lot of truth to that perception. Robert Stone never went to college, and has held any number of odd jobs, ranging from radioman in the Navy to New Orleans census taker to radio
actor. His cavorting with writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters was memorably chronicled in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." There were the months spent in Vietnam in 1971 as a journalist that became the source material for "Dog Soldiers," his harrowing novel of drug smuggling and a country torn asunder, politically and morally, by the war.
To that thinking, he follows in the tradition of Jack London and John Steinbeck and the grandest chest-puffer of them all, Ernest Hemingway. He's not just dreaming up pretty stories out of the air: He's lived the life.
"I'm not saying that every writer needs to lead the life I did to write," Mr. Stone acknowledges. "But there's no question that it helped me. I like writing about people who are living on the edge."
But there's the quiet, reflective side to Mr. Stone as well, and it comes across especially in conversation. Then, he appears an ++ unlikely candidate to be the swashbuckling auteur: He's thoughtful, gentle and soft-spoken. On this particular late-winter day, he's got the texts from several books lying about in the study, including a copy of James Joyce's "Dubliners."
Mr. Stone sounds very much like the writing teacher as he discusses "Dubliners." "An absolutely essential work for a student of writing," Mr. Stone says, almost reverently. "I've used several of these stories in my teaching. The characters, the depth of them. . . . " He shakes his head as his voice trails off.
He acknowledges that some readers of his early works might be disappointed by the characters and themes in "Outerbridge Reach." There's nary a drug smuggler in this novel, or a Central American revolutionary or a Bible-thumper or con man. The central character, Owen Browne, is a guy involved in a serious mid-life crisis, and he's proving his mettle by -- here we go -- sailing a yacht.
So some might wonder: Is this the Robert Stone who dropped acid with the Merry Pranksters in the mid-'60s -- the same fellow who wrote about America's underside so darkly, so extraordinarily, in "A Hall of Mirrors," or "Dog Soldiers," or "A Flag for Sunrise"? What are we going to get next -- a novel about a fellow who falls apart because he can't choose between a Mercedes or a BMW?
"I guess this just shows my embourgeoisement," Mr. Stone says sardonically, with a twinkle in his eye. "I'm sure some of my old readers will be bothered. But I'm still writing about the same things."
But "Outerbridge Reach" is much more than a story about a fellow in his 40s whose life is coming unglued. Browne, a Naval Academy graduate and former Navy officer in Vietnam, is haunted by his service two decades before in Vietnam. He is slowly becoming estranged from his wife and teen-age daughter; his life seems shaped by "old rages and regrets." He faces a spiritual crisis of the highest order, and his dilemma is adroitly outlined by the introduction of Ron Strickland, a cynical, hip, left-wing maker of documentaries who does a film on Browne's solo sailing trip around the world. Strickland's amorality is in marked contrast to Browne's desperate search for meaning in his life.
Mr. Stone says the idea of developing a character such as Owen Browne, one so different from his usual collection of lowlifes, was appealing, if very difficult.
"Owen's middle-class, and most of my other characters have not been," Mr. Stone says. "Strickland, in that sense, was much easier to draw. And I wanted to show Vietnam from his perspective, as a former officer, one who waged the war."
"Outerbridge Reach" contains one passage that surely will resonate in the soul of many a reader. Browne is discussing with his skeptical wife whether to undertake the trip, which is likely a foolhardy, dangerous venture -- possibly a fatal one. And yet . . .
"Sometimes I feel like I'm in the wrong life."
L "The wrong life," she repeated coldly. "I don't understand."
"I mean," he said, "that I've never done the things I ought to have done years ago. I took a wrong turn."
"I think everybody at one time or another has felt that they wished they could do something else," Mr. Stone acknowledges with a slight smile, when asked if he has felt the same way as Owen Browne. "Who wouldn't want to just chuck everything and go on to another life?"
But at this point, Robert Stone's life seems to have worked out pretty well, despite the many detours and false starts along the way. "A Hall of Mirrors" grew out of his experiences as a census taker in New Orleans and won the 1968 William Faulkner Foundation Award for a "notable first novel."
His reputation was really made by his second novel, "Dog Soldiers," which won the National Book Award in 1974 (it was made into the movie "Who'll Stop the Rain," a film Mr. Stone doesn't particularly care for). But some Stone aficionados champion his book "A Flag for Sunrise," published in 1981, as his best. Set in Tecan, a fictional Latin American country, it portrays chillingly a guerrilla war involving the CIA, Marxist guerrillas, a brutal government and a host of characters who blur any distinction between good guys and bad guys.
"There are only a few writers in America now -- probably only three or four -- who are able to deal with the central issues in American life," says Madison Smartt Bell, the writer-in-residence at Goucher College and author of several novels and short story collections. "Of those few, Robert Stone may be the best.
"He's incorporated all the changes in American society that began with Vietnam, and incorporated them into his vision," Mr. Bell continues. "It has a personal level, it has a political level, and it has larger ambitions. Like the work of other truly great novels, it tells you about the times and ultimately goes beyond it into the eternal verities of human nature."
Mr. Stone says that for the moment he is putting aside the novel to put together a collection of short stories. He has had five published so far, and is working on a few more. Then, he says, he wants to write a novel about California in the 1960s, a subject that has been well mined by the popular media but seems especially suited to Mr. Stone's talent and temperament.
"It was almost a magical time, even with all the excesses," he says. "There was a Bohemianism that is just missing today on college campuses, and almost everywhere else. Think about it: Bohemianism is just about gone today. Who would have believed that in the late 1960s -- that it would be gone so fast?"
THE STONE FILE
Occupation: Writer.
Born: Aug. 21, 1937; Brooklyn, N.Y.
Education: Quit Catholic high school in senior year for being "militantly atheistic."
Current home: Westport, Conn.
Family: Married since 1959 to Janice; son, Ian, and daughter, Deirdre.
Favorite writers: Many, but especially admires Franz Kafka, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.
On being compared to Joseph Conrad: "That happens because we both write about the sea, and about moral themes. It's flattering, but I don't take it seriously. He was on a different level -- an extraordinary writer."
On teaching writing: "Some people say you can't teach a person to write, and in a sense, they're right. But you can bring out talent, and you can help provide a supportive environment."