Introduction


Robert Olen Butler
The only thing critics can agree about Robert Olen Butler is that they cannot agree about him. While some have rapturously praised his work, others have found ample room for complaint. By Butler’s own admission, not everything he writes is a masterpiece. In one interview, he owned up to having a slew of his short stories, novels, and plays never published because they simply were not good. Despite the criticism, Butler’s 1993 A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, a collection of short stories based on the author’s experiences in Vietnam, won the Pulitzer Prize. In addition, Butler has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. An award bearing his name was created in his honor to recognize up-and-coming authors.

Essential Facts

  1. Butler’s original interest was theater, which he studied as an undergraduate. Only while pursuing his Master’s degree did he switch to creative writing.
  2. Butler served in the military during the Vietnam War and even did intelligence work. Some of his later books recount his fondness for the Vietnamese people.
  3. The short story collection Severance, one of Butler’s most curious works, is about the post-beheading thoughts of people like Marie Antoinette and Nicole Brown Simpson.
  4. Butler’s short stories have appeared in virtually every major publication, including Harper’s, GQ, and The New Yorker.
  5. Butler courted controversy in 2007 when he sent his students at Florida State University an intimately detailed email about his fourth wife’s decision to leave him for billionaire Ted Turner.