James Carlos Blake
James Carlos Blake | |
---|---|
Born | Tampico, Mexico | May 26, 1947
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Education | Saint Joseph Academy University of South Florida (BA, MA) Bowling Green State University (MFA) |
Notable awards | Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize (2005) |
Parents | Carlos Sebastian Blake Hernandez Estrella Maria Lozano Cano |
James Carlos Blake (born May 26, 1947) is an American
Biography
Blake has written about his boyhood in a memoir essay entitled “The Outsider” and has discussed his life and work in a profile in
Works
Although Blake wrote sporadically from his teens until his thirties, it was not until the early 1980s, while again living in Miami, that he began to write with purpose,
In the ten years following the publication of The Pistoleer, Blake published eight more novels and a collection of short works, plus more short stories and two memoir essays. In 1997 his third novel, In the Rogue Blood, gained him considerable attention and won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. Dealing with the misadventures of a pair of American brothers during the time of the U.S. war with Mexico in the late 1840s, In the Rogue Blood is generally regarded as one of the most compelling works in recent American literature to treat violence as a primary engine of U.S. history. It has been widely compared to Cormac McCarthy’s savage masterpiece, Blood Meridian.[7]
While most of Blake’s short stories—and a novella, “Texas Woman Blues” — are set in recent times, his four latest books, The Rules of Wolfe (2013), The House of Wolfe (2015), The Ways of Wolfe (2017), and The Bones of Wolfe (2020) are his first contemporary novels. All of his previous novels are set between the mid-19th-century and the late 1930s, and several of them feature historical figures as protagonists. In addition to Wes Hardin, his novels have centered on
Cultural significance
Several of Blake's works have been published in foreign editions, and some are under film option, including The Killings of Stanley Ketchel, which has been optioned by Terence Winter, writer and executive producer of The Sopranos and creator of Boardwalk Empire.[8] The Friends of Pancho Villa was going to be turned into a movie by director Emir Kusturica, starring Johnny Depp in the leading role, but Depp pulled out. According to Blake, Kusturica spoke to Benicio del Toro about taking over the role, but the movie ultimately did not happen. In interviews writer/director Martin Koolhoven said Blake's novel In the Rogue Blood had an influence on his controversial Brimstone, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2016. Koolhoven explained he understood he had to write a western from a female perspective after he read a certain passage about the sister of the leading characters. Also the movie features a scold's bridle, an idea he got from reading In the Rogue Blood.
Awards
- 1991 Quarterly West Novella Prize for “I, Fierro”
- 1993 Authors in the Park National Short Story Competition Award for “Under the Sierras”
- 1997 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction for In the Rogue Blood
- 1999 Southwest Book Award (Border Regional Library Association) for Borderlands
- 1999 Chautauqua South Book Award for Red Grass River
- 2005 Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize for A World of Thieves
- 2007 Maltese Falcon Award (Maltese Falcon Society of Japan) for Under the Skin
- 2013 French Grand Prix du Roman Noir Étranger for Red Grass River
- 2020 French Prix de Beaune for Best Foreign Novel for Handsome Harry
Other recognition
- 1995 Finalist, Best Novel of the West (Western Writers of America): The Pistoleer
- 2004 "Best Books of 2004": Entertainment Weekly: Handsome Harry
- 2013 Finalist, Best Western Long Novel (Western Writers of America): Country of the Bad Wolfes
- 2013 Southwest Books of the Year (Pima County Public Library): The Rules of Wolfe
- 2013 "Best Books for Men 2013," Men's Journal: The Rules of Wolfe
- 2013 "Year's Best Crime Novels," Booklist: The Rules of Wolfe
- 2013 "Best Novels of the Year," Deadly Pleasures: The Rules of Wolfe
- 2014 "The 101 Best Crime Novels of the Past Decade," Booklist: The Rules of Wolfe
- 2015 Shortlisted for CWA Gold Dagger Award (UK): The Rules of Wolfe
- 2018 "Top Ten Books About Gangsters," The Guardian (UK): The Rules of Wolfe
Bibliography
Short works
- “Aliens in the Garden,” short story, The Sun (magazine) (October, 1987); Chapel Hill, NC
- “The House of Esperanza,” short story, The Sun (April, 1988); Chapel Hill, NC
- “A Scotsman Dies in Mexico,” short story, Voices of the Heart (1988); Ginn Press, Needham Heights, MA
- “Soldadera,” short story, Paragraph (summer, 1990); Holyoke, MA
- “Perdition Road,” short story, The Long Story (Spring, 1991); North Andover, MA;
- “Small Times,” short story, Gulf Stream Magazine (Spring, 1991); Florida International University: Miami, FL; later reprinted as “La Vida Loca”
- “I, Fierro,” novella, Quarterly West (Fall, 1991); University of Utah: Salt Lake City, Utah; includes parts of “Three Tales of the Revolution”
- “The Sharks Below,” essay, Paragraph, (Winter/Spring, 1992); Holyoke, MA
- “Three Tales of the Revolution,” short story, The Sun (April, 1993); Chapel Hill, NC
- “Under the Sierras,” short story, Fine Print (1993); Winter Park, FL
- “Runaway Horses,” short story, Saguaro (1994); University of Arizona: Tucson, AZ
- “The Outsider,” memoir essay, The Los Angeles TimesBook Review, 24 May 1998
- “Referee,” short story, Smoke (Summer, 1998)
- “Texas Woman Blues,” novella, Borderlands (1999); Avon Books, New York, NY; includes “Perdition Road.”
- “Old Boys,” short story, Glimmer Train Stories (Winter, 2000); Portland, OR
- “Calendar Girl,” short story, Oxford American (Sept/Oct 2000); Oxford, MS
- “Shortcut,” memoir essay, Oxford American (Mar/Apr 2001); Oxford, MS
- “La Vida Loca,” short story, The Barcelona Review (Nov/Dec 2001); Barcelona, Spain
- “Miranda of Mazatlán,” short story, The Barcelona Review (Winter 2012/13); Barcelona, Spain
- “My Other Self,” essay, The New York Times, July 28, 2013
- “With a Pistol in My Hand,” essay, Texas Monthly, (April 2016); Austin, TX
Novels
- The Pistoleer (Berkley: New York, 1995; reissued Grove Press, New York, 2016)
- The Friends of Pancho Villa (Berkley: New York, 1996; reissued Grove Press, New York, 2017)
- In the Rogue Blood (Avon: New York, 1997)
- Red Grass River (Avon: New York, 1998)
- Wildwood Boys (William Morrow: New York, 2000)
- A World of Thieves (William Morrow: New York, 2002)
- Under the Skin (William Morrow: New York, 2003)
- Handsome Harry (William Morrow: New York, 2004)
- The Killings of Stanley Ketchel (William Morrow: New York, 2005)
- Country of the Bad Wolfes (Cinco Puntos Press: El Paso, 2012; reissued Grove Press, New York, 2020)
- The Rules of Wolfe (Mysterious Press/Grove Atlantic: New York, 2013)
- The House of Wolfe (Mysterious Press/Grove Atlantic: New York, 2015)
- The Ways of Wolfe (Mysterious Press/Grove Atlantic: New York, 2017)
- The Bones of Wolfe (Mysterious Press/Grove Atlantic: New York, 2020)
Collections of short works
- Borderlands (Avon Books: New York, 1999; reissued Grove Press, New York, 2017)
References
- ^ Jennifer Reese, “Criminal Defense,” Entertainment Weekly, February 6, 2004
- ^ Ron Franscell, “Brutal, Beautiful: Violence as Art,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 25, 2003
- ^ Maura McMillan, “A Tribe of One,” Firsts: the Book Collector’s Magazine, May, 2001
- ^ Doris Meredith, untitled review, Roundup Magazine, December, 1995
- ^ Diana Anhalt, “Hard-Boiled, Soft-Boiled in Galveston,” Texas Observer, June 20, 2003
- ^ a b James R. Giles, "James Carlos Blake." In Twenty-First-Century American Novelists: Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB):350, ed. Wanda H. Giles and James R. Giles, 30-38. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2009.
- ^ Jan Reid, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Next Cormac McCarthy,” Texas Monthly, May 1999
- ^ Stayton Bonner, “History of Violence: James Carlos Blake's The Rules of Wolfe,″ Men's Journal, September 2013