Steve Erickson
Encyclopedia
Stephen Michael Erickson (born April 20, 1950) is an American novelist, essayist and film critic. He is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters's Award in Literature and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation., and is considered an important representative of the Avantpop
Avantpop
Avantpop is an American artistic movement which derived from postmodernism in the 1990s.According to its proponents, among which there are literary critic Larry McCaffery and writer Mark Amerika, Avantpop is characterized by the use of materials coming from the mass media , that are mostly...

 movement.

Biography

Steve Erickson was born and brought up as an only child in Los Angeles. For many years his mother, a former actress, ran a small theatre in L.A; his father (died in 1990) was a photographer. When he was a child he stuttered badly. Because of his stuttering some teachers believed that he could not read. This motif occasionally has recurred in his novels, such as Amnesiascope
Amnesiascope
Amnesiascope is a 1996 novel by Steve Erickson. Set in Los Angeles after a cataclysmic earthquake, the novel incorporates elements of other novels that Erickson had published, such as the silent film from his first novel, Days Between Stations....

.

Erickson studied film at UCLA (BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

, 1972), then journalism (M.A.
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 1973). For a few years he worked as a freelance writer for alternative weekly newspapers. His first novel, Days Between Stations
Days Between Stations (novel)
Days Between Stations is a 1985 novel by Steve Erickson. It has been translated into French, Italian, Russian and Japanese. Several stories intersect in this novel: Lauren and Jason's unhappy marriage, Lauren's love affair with Adrien-Michel, and a lost silent film titled "The Death of...

, was published in 1985, when he reportedly destroyed all of his earlier work.

Since 1985 Erickson has published eight novels, with a ninth, These Dreams of You, to appear in early 2012. Two non-fiction books, Leap Year and American Nomad, are chronicles of his cross-country journeys during the presidential elections of 1988 and 1996 respectively. Featuring characters from his novels, they contain Erickson’s comments on politics, current events, music, film, literature and, most of all, contemporary America. Erickson himself appears briefly as a fictional character in Michael Ventura
Michael Ventura
Michael Ventura is an American novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and cultural critic.-History:Michael Ventura commenced his career as a journalist at the Austin Sun, a counter-culture bi-weekly newspaper that published in the 1970s. Ventura is best known for his long-running column, "Letters at 3...

's 1996 novel, The Death of Frank Sinatra.

Erickson has written on a variety of topics in periodicals including The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...

, Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

 and Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

 among others. Currently he is a teacher with the MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...

 Writing Program at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and is the editor of the national literary magazine Black Clock
Black Clock
Black Clock is an American literary magazine. Edited by Steve Erickson and published bi-annually by CalArts in association with the MFA Writing Program, the magazine is "dedicated to fiction, poetry and creative essays that explore the frontier territory of constructive anarchy." According to the...

. He has written about film for Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 magazine since 2001, and in 2010 was nominated for the National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...

 in criticism.

Erickson's work has been admired and cited by other novelists including Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

, David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...

, Richard Powers
Richard Powers
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.- Life and work :...

, Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...

, Mark Z. Danielewski
Mark Z. Danielewski
Mark Z. Danielewski, born March 5, 1966 in New York City, New York, is an American author, best known for his debut novel House of Leaves...

, In a winter 2008 poll by the National Book Critics Circle
National Book Critics Circle
The National Book Critics Circle is an American tax-exempt organization for active book reviewers. Its flagship is the National Book Critics Circle Award....

 of 800 novelists and writers, Erickson's Zeroville
Zeroville
Zeroville is a 2007 novel by Steve Erickson on film's upheaval in the 1970s. It has been translated into French, Italian, and other languages. It was named one of the best novels of the year by Newsweek, the Washington Post BookWorld and the Los Angeles Times Book Review among others, and in...

 was named one of the five favorite novels of the previous year. In March 2011, Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

 announced that actor-director James Franco
James Franco
James Edward Franco is an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author, painter, performance artist and instructor at New York University. He left college in order to pursue acting and started off his career by making guest appearances on television series in the 1990s...

 had acquired feature rights to Zeroville, to begin filming in 2012.

He lives with his family in Topanga Canyon, in Southern California.

Recurring motifs

Erickson’s novels revolve around certain concepts that appear in many of his works. One of them is slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

, both actual and metaphorical. Arc d'X
Arc d'X
Arc d'X , by Steve Erickson, is an Avantpop novel. It has been translated into Italian, Japanese and other languages.-Plot summary:...

 begins with the story of the love affair between Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

 and a slave girl, Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...

. In a number of his novels the selling, buying, owning and disowning of women appears; as often, the men are the more profoundly trapped by what they seek or purport to possess. In virtually all of his novels, the female protagonist is the catalytic figure who sets events into motion, particularly in The Sea Came in at Midnight
The Sea Came in at Midnight
The Sea Came In At Midnight is the sixth novel by American writer Steve Erickson. It has been translated into French, German, Italian, Russian and Japanese...

 and Our Ecstatic Days where the female characters are dominant. Another important theme in Erickson's novels, particularly in Our Ecstatic Days, is parenthood
Parenting
Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood...

 and the loss of a child. The Occupant from The Sea Came in at Midnight is left by his wife and child. In Days Between Stations Adolphe and Maurice Sarre are abandoned by their mother, and Lauren’s son Jules dies. Our Ecstatic Days follows a mother's search for her missing son over the course of a quarter century. The profound estrangement from his father of Zerovilles central character, Vikar, leads to his obsession with movies, and later he becomes a paternal figure to the teenage Zazi after her mother dies.

Sometimes Erickson relies on autobiographical information, though filtered through an unconventional imagination. Erickson's narratives often take place in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. Amnesiascope
Amnesiascope
Amnesiascope is a 1996 novel by Steve Erickson. Set in Los Angeles after a cataclysmic earthquake, the novel incorporates elements of other novels that Erickson had published, such as the silent film from his first novel, Days Between Stations....

 is almost a memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

 in which actual people and events from Erickson’s life mix with his imagination. One recurring theme is filmmaking, presented from the perspective of a director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 (Days Between Stations), screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 (Rubicon Beach), critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

 (Amnesiascope), and film editor (Zeroville). Sometimes the films are transgressive, misunderstood and rejected by the audience.

Some of Erickson's novels can be described as apocalyptic. They present the slow obliteration of the world in which his characters live. Often it is nature that turns against people (the long winter in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, sand storms in L.A. and the disappearance of water in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 and the Mediterranean region in Days Between Stations; the earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...

 in Amnesiascope; the lake that floods L.A. in both Rubicon Beach and Our Ecstatic Days). The characters of the novels usually live in metropoles: L.A., New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, Paris or Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, in which the unexpected natural phenomena cause chaos and show how brittle civilization actually is. Erickson makes occasional use of somewhat supernatural elements, such as the extraordinary gifts of some of his characters (Catherine from Rubicon Beach) and bizarre artifacts (a bottle with human eyes from Days Between Stations). The most powerful force of Erickson’s universe is love, often passionate, sensual, overpowering, unstoppable. Lovers hurt each other but at the same time cannot live without each other. When the love is lost, people become empty, bitter or full of hatred. The affection is almost like possession.

Erickson’s characters often appear in multiple books. Adolphe Sarre from Days Between Stations comes back in Amnesiascope and is alluded to in Zeroville. Lauren and Kara from Days Between Stations appear in Arc d'X; Kara also appears in Tours of the Black Clock
Tours of the Black Clock
Tours of the Black Clock is the third novel by author Steve Erickson, published in 1989. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese. The narrative concerns itself with two of the most influential figures of the 20th century, as Adolf Hitler appears as an important character,...

. Carl appears in Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock, Amnesiascope and The Sea Came in at Midnight. Lauren and Jeanine from Days Between Stations and Catherine and Leigh from Rubicon Beach are mentioned in Tours of the Black Clock, as characters appearing in the mind of the latter book's writer protagonist. Wade and Mallory from Rubicon Beach emerge as major characters in Arc d’X. Kristin features in both The Sea Came in at Midnight and Our Ecstatic Days. Jainlight from Tours of the Black Clock reappears, in an altered incarnation, in Our Ecstatic Days.

Novels

  • Days Between Stations
    Days Between Stations (novel)
    Days Between Stations is a 1985 novel by Steve Erickson. It has been translated into French, Italian, Russian and Japanese. Several stories intersect in this novel: Lauren and Jason's unhappy marriage, Lauren's love affair with Adrien-Michel, and a lost silent film titled "The Death of...

     (1985)
  • Rubicon Beach (1986)
  • Tours of the Black Clock
    Tours of the Black Clock
    Tours of the Black Clock is the third novel by author Steve Erickson, published in 1989. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese. The narrative concerns itself with two of the most influential figures of the 20th century, as Adolf Hitler appears as an important character,...

     (1989)
  • Arc d'X
    Arc d'X
    Arc d'X , by Steve Erickson, is an Avantpop novel. It has been translated into Italian, Japanese and other languages.-Plot summary:...

     (1993)
  • Amnesiascope
    Amnesiascope
    Amnesiascope is a 1996 novel by Steve Erickson. Set in Los Angeles after a cataclysmic earthquake, the novel incorporates elements of other novels that Erickson had published, such as the silent film from his first novel, Days Between Stations....

     (1996)
  • The Sea Came in at Midnight
    The Sea Came in at Midnight
    The Sea Came In At Midnight is the sixth novel by American writer Steve Erickson. It has been translated into French, German, Italian, Russian and Japanese...

     (1999)
  • Our Ecstatic Days (2005)
  • Zeroville
    Zeroville
    Zeroville is a 2007 novel by Steve Erickson on film's upheaval in the 1970s. It has been translated into French, Italian, and other languages. It was named one of the best novels of the year by Newsweek, the Washington Post BookWorld and the Los Angeles Times Book Review among others, and in...

     (2007)
  • These Dreams of You (2012)

Awards

  • National Endowment for the Arts
    National Endowment for the Arts
    The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

     (1987);
  • Notable Book of the Year, The New York Times Book Review
    The New York Times Book Review
    The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...

     (1987): Rubicon Beach;
  • Notable Book of the Year, The New York Times Book Review (1989): Tours of the Black Clock;
  • Best Books of the Year, The Village Voice
    The Village Voice
    The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

     (1989): Tours of the Black Clock;
  • Notable Book of the Year, The New York Times Book Review (1993): Arc d'X;
  • Best Fiction of the Year, Entertainment Weekly
    Entertainment Weekly
    Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

     (1993): Arc d'X;
  • Best Novel nominee, British Fantasy Society
    British Fantasy Society
    The British Fantasy Society began in 1971 as the British Weird Fantasy Society, an offshoot of the British Science Fiction Association. The society is dedicated to promoting the best in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres....

     (1997): Amnesiascope;
  • Notable Book of the Year, The New York Times Book Review (1999): The Sea Came in at Midnight;
  • Best Books of the Year, Uncut
    UNCUT (magazine)
    Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...

     (1999): The Sea Came in at Midnight;
  • Best Novel nominee, British Fantasy Society (1999): The Sea Came in at Midnight;
  • Best Books of the Year, Los Angeles Times Book Review (2005): Our Ecstatic Days;
  • Best Books of the Year, Uncut (2005): Our Ecstatic Days;
  • John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2007);
  • Best Books of the Year, Newsweek
    Newsweek
    Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

     (2007): Zeroville;
  • Best Books of the Year, Washington Post BookWorld (2007): Zeroville;
  • Best Books of the Year, Los Angeles Times Book Review (2007): Zeroville;
  • American Academy of Arts and Letters, Award in Literature (2010)

External links

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