Author Archives: SJW

Acclaimed Writer Visits East Greenwich Thursday for Signing, Reading

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From East Greenwich Patch:

Stewart O’Nan will read from and sign copies of his latest novel, “West of Sunset.”

Acclaimed author Stewart O’Nan is in town and he’ll be at Symposium Books on Thursday night for a book signing and reading from his latest novel, “West of Sunset.”

O’Nan, an award-winning writer, is widely known for the novel “Wish You Were Here” and has also penned “Snow Angles,” “A Prayer for the Dying,” “Last Night at the Lobster,” and “Emily, Alone.”

O’Nan will be at Symposium Books beginning at 6 p.m.

The shop is located at 1000 Division Road in East Greenwich Square.

For more information, head over to Symposium Book’s Facebook page.

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Also, from Coastal Illustrated:

Gatsby’s doomed creator

Stewart O’Nan is undoubtedly one of the bestselling authors you’ve never heard of. He started writing professionally with his wife’s encouragement after leaving his career as a Grumman Aerospace test engineer to pursue his real passion. Over the past two decades he has given us 15 splendidly dynamic novels. He’s an author who writes easily without an ounce of pretension; a man who writes about the people nobody else is writing about. For instance, his book “Last Night at the Lobster,” a spare, nearly perfect novel in which there are no unexpected plot twists, and no overarching political themes, revolves around the manager of a doomed Red Lobster restaurant during its last night of operation. (O’Nan cites his major influences as Stephen King and Flannery O’Connor, two names you’re not likely to hear linked again any time soon, but make perfect sense when you read his work.)

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Theodore Weesner, Author of ‘The Car Thief,’ Dies at 79

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Theodore Weesner in 1972. Credit Random House

From The New York Times:

Theodore Weesner, a novelist who mined his wayward youth for the stuff of his celebrated first novel, “The Car Thief,” and whose half-dozen other books earned plaudits for their patient, realistic narratives and humanely considered characters, died on Thursday at a hospital near his home in Portsmouth, N.H. He was 79.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Theodore Jr. said.

Mr. Weesner’s conventional literary life of teaching and writing emerged from decidedly unconventional beginnings. The child of an alcoholic father and a teenage mother, he spent part of his youth with other children in an unofficial foster home, became a distressed and introspective teenager who turned to petty crime, never graduated from high school and lied about his age to join the Army at 17.

His 1987 book, “The True Detective,” which is set in Portsmouth and employs multiple perspectives in telling the story of the abduction and murder of a 12-year-old boy, received mixed reviews, but its admirers include the novelist Stewart O’Nan, who, in a radio interview, called it “one of the great, great American novels.”

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Frances Kroll Ring dies at 99; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final secretary

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I was lucky enough to meet Frances this past January and thank her for her memoir, Against the Current, which helped me a great deal.  At 98 she was still pithy, and loved telling stories about how working with Fitzgerald was an education.

– Stewart O’Nan

Frances Kroll Ring, one of the last living links to novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, died Thursday, her family said. She was 99 and died at home in Benedict Canyon after a short illness.

Ring began working as Fitzgerald’s secretary and typist in 1939, when he was sending out short stories, working occasionally for Hollywood studios and writing the manuscript “The Love of the Last Tycoon.”

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James Ponsoldt Setting On F. Scott Fitzgerald Tale ‘West Of Sunset’ With SKE

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From Deadline:

The Spectacular Now helmer James Ponsoldt is negotiating to adapt and direct West Of Sunset, an adaptation of the Stewart O’Nan novel for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. SKE is negotiating both to option the book and make a deal with the filmmaker, after the package was shopped this week.

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Review of West of Sunset in Historical Novel Society

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In 1937, author F. Scott Fitzgerald travels to Hollywood to salvage his writing career as a screenwriter. He’s considered a has-been – his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, was published in 1925 – and his rampant alcoholism doesn’t help. He struggles on with screenplays only to be replaced by other writers, then he must scramble for another job to offset his huge debts. His wife, Zelda, once the darling of the Jazz Age, has had several nervous breakdowns and is confined to an asylum back east. Scott visits her dutifully, but he’s worn out by her unpredictable nature.

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