Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Butler, Robert Olen - Robert Olen Butler and Missouri Review (interview date February 1994)

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Robert Olen Butler and Missouri Review (interview date February 1994)

SOURCE: Butler, Robert Olen, and Missouri Review. In Conversations with American Novelists, edited by Kay Bonetti, Greg Michalson, Speer Morgan, Jo Sapp, and Sam Stowers, pp. 201-16. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.

[In the following interview, originally conducted in February 1994, Butler discusses his career as a novelist and the influence of the theater and playwriting on his work.]

Of the Americans writing about the Vietnam War, Robert Olen Butler is one of the few who focuses on the Vietnamese people themselves rather than the effects of the war experience on Americans and the American culture or psyche. This interview was conducted in February 1994, shortly after Butler won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection of stories A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992), a book he recognizes as an artistic breakthrough for him. In the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Madison Smartt Bell (review date 23 February 1992)
   2. Richard Eder (review date 29 March 1992)
   3. Kathleen Gilgore (review date 4 September 1992)
   4. Cynthia McCown (review date 11 December 1993)
   5. Josephine Hart (review date 16 January 1994)
   6. Robert Olen Butler and Missouri Review (interview date February 1994)
   7. Julia Glass (review date 6 February 1994)
   8. Robert Olen Butler and Michael Sartisky (interview date spring 1994)
   9. Mark Ford (review date 12 May 1994)
   10. Helen Heritage August (review date August 1994)
   11. Lorrie Smith (essay date spring 1995)
   12. Jonathan Penner (review date 10 November 1996)
   13. Barbara C. Ewell (review date 17 May 1997)
   14. Susan Balée (review date summer 1997)
   15. Peter Stanford (review date 17 August 1997)
   16. Susie Linfield (review date 25 January 1998)
   17. Thomas Bonner (review date 20 June 1998)
   18. Ron Charles (review date 6 January 2000)
   19. Kit Reed (review date 16 January 2000)
   20. Jonathan Levi (review date 23 January 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

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