Trevanian
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Trevanian is an American spy novelist. Trevanian is believed to be a pen name for Dr. Rodney William Whitaker, born June 12, 1931 in Granville, New York. He is also believed to have published works as Nicholas Seare and Benat Le Cagot as well as under his own name, the novel, The Main was originally slated to appear under the pen name, Jean-Paul Morin.
After serving in the military during in the Korean War era, Whitaker completed his B.A. (1959) and M.A. (1960) in Drama and a Ph.D. (1966) in Communications from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Whitaker then taught drama at Dana College in Blair, Nebraska before becoming an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Film in the late 1960's where he eventually became department chair. Whitaker also briefly taught at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania for three semesters in 1977-78 after leaving the University of Texas. Whitaker has resided with his wife of forty years in the Basque region of France, the setting of his novels "Shibumi" and "The Summer of Katya", since the late 1970's.
He has written many best-sellers, one of which The Eiger Sanction was made into a 1975 movie staring Clint Eastwood. Trevanian described the movie as "vapid" in a footnote in Shibumi. Interestingly, he requested (and received) a screenwriting credit as Rod Whitaker. The balance of the script was written by Warren Murphy, the mystery author perhaps best known for co-writing the Destroyer series of men's action novels, also about a different sarcastic assassin.
Trevanian kept his true identity unknown for many years, and refused to grant interviews or contribute to the publicity efforts of his publishers. Trevanian's first known interview was granted to Carol Lawson of the New York Times for a June 10, 1979 article coinciding with the release of Shibumi. In this article Trevanian stated that "Trevanian is going out of business. Now he can talk." It was often rumored that he was actually Robert Ludlum using a pen name to which Trevanian stated, "I don't even know who he is. I read Proust, but not much else written in the 20th century.". In any event Trevanian's retirement proved short lived as the appearance of the second Nicholas Seare book and The Summer of Katya demonstrated in 1983.
The most comprehensive source of information remains a written response to a series of questions in an August 10, 1998 online interview for Publisher's Weekly, while promoting his comeback novel, "Incident At Twenty-Mile." In this interview, Trevanian wrote at length about his fiction career and writing methods as well as his fifteen year absence from publishing.(Note: A different interview was circulated earlier by the publisher, St. Martin's in the publicity materials enclosed with advance readers copies of the novel.) This is the one of only two substantial sources of biographical information for the reclusive author, the other being his entry in Contemporary Authors.
Trevanian's latest work, published in June, 2005 is the biographical novel The Crazyladies of Pearl Street which traces the author's childhood experiences of growing up during the depression and WWII in Albany, New York. The short story Mrs McGivney's Nickel from Hot Night In The City is one of the chapters of this book.
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Website
"At present, the most comprehensive source for Trevanian news and material (and maintained in association with the author): www.trevanian.com
Nonfiction
As Rod Whitaker:
- The Language of Film (1970)
Novels
As Trevanian:
- The Eiger Sanction (1972)
- The Loo Sanction (1973)
- The Main (1976)
- Shibumi (published May 14, 1979)
- The Summer of Katya (published March 25, 1983)
- Different Voices (a short-story collection slated to appear in the Fall of 1984 on Crown, it never materialized)
- Incident at Twenty-Mile (published September 21, 1998) - Note: the Paperback version is a revised edition published June 23, 1999
- Hot Night in the City (published May 10, 2000)
- Crazyladies of Pearl Street (June, 2005)
As Nicholas Seare:
- 1339 or So ...Being An Apology for A Pedlar (1975, also a play)
- Rude Tales And Glorious (1983)
Short Stories
- Switching; by Trevanian. Playboy Magazine. December 1978. (Note: appeared in Hot Night in the City as After Hours at Rick's)
- Minutes of a Village Meeting; by Benat Le Cagot, translated by Trevanian. Harper's Monthly. February 1979. pgs. 60 - 63. (Note: a revised version of this story appeared in Hot Night in the City.)
- The Secrets of Miss Plimsoll, Private Secretary; by Trevanian. Redbook. March 1984. (Note: a revised version of this story appeared in Hot Night in the City as The Sacking of Miss Plimsoll.)
- The Apple Tree: by Trevanian. The Antioch Review. Yellow Springs: Spring 2000. Vol. 58, Iss. 2; p. 195 (14 pages)
- Waking to the Spirit Clock; by Trevanian. The Antioch Review. Yellow Springs: Summer 2003. Vol. 61, Iss. 3; p. 409
External links
- Article from Albany's Metroland Magazine (http://www.metroland.net/arts_feature.html)es:Trevanian