A writer of highly experimental, nightmarish fiction, John Hawkes was one of the most original and uncompromising artists to come out of the post-World War II generation of writers. Challenging established American fiction with its limitations of realism (verifiable settings, logical plots, and recognizable themes), Hawkes aggressively pursued the irrational, the erotic, the disruptive, and the comic. In a 1965 interview with John Enck, Hawkes talked about his artistic vision: "I take literally rather than figuratively the cliché about breaking new ground. . . . the idea that the imagination should always uncover new worlds for us. I want to try to create a world, not represent it." For this reason his fiction is "nearly pure vision," relying more on dreams and the unconscious than on strictly historical or autobiographical material. The result is highly poetic prose that asserts the primacy of art and the imagination.

Born to John Clendennin Burne...