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 interview he talks about his development as a novelist, including the ultimate effects of...