Burroughs and Toni Morrison, proclaiming Erickson 'a subterranean literary figure. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, William S. In 2021, the University Press of Mississippi issued Conversations With Steve Erickson as part of a series that includes William Faulkner, F. In a winter 2008 poll by the National Book Critics Circle of 800 novelists and writers, Zeroville was named one of the five favorite novels of the previous year, and in the December 2015 issue of Granta, Jonathan Lethem declared the then unreleased Shadowbahn (perhaps Erickson's most acclaimed work) the best American novel of whatever year in which it was ultimately published. Greil Marcus has called Erickson 'the only authentic American surrealist,' and Tours of the Black Clock appears on Larry McCaffery's list of the 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction. His books have appeared on best-of-the-year lists by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.Ī 'writer's writer,' Erickson is regarded as one of America's best living novelists, 'a maximal visionary.in the league of Pynchon, DeLillo, Atwood, Rushdie, Okri, Pamuk.' His work has been cited by Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, Dana Spiotta, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Kathy Acker, Rick Moody, Joshua Cohen and Mark Z. Along with three works of non-fiction, Erickson has published 10 novels in more than a dozen languages. At UCLA Erickson studied literature, film, journalism and political philosophy, and for a few years he worked as a freelance writer for alternative weekly newspapers. Erickson had a pronounced stutter as a child when teachers believed he couldn't read this motif occasionally has recurred in novels such as Amnesiascope. His father, who died in 1990, was a photographer. For many years his mother, a former actress, ran a small theatre in L.A. Steve Erickson was born and raised in Los Angeles. The author of influential works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock, Zeroville and Shadowbahn, he is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Stephen Michael Erickson is an American novelist.

Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson