Philipp Meyer
Encyclopedia
Philipp Meyer is an American
fiction writer, born in 1974, and is the author of the novel
American Rust
, as well as short stories
published in McSweeney’s Quarterly
, The Iowa Review
, and Esquire UK. Meyer is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
. He grew up in Hampden, a blue-collar Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood often featured in the films of John Waters
. His mother is an artist; his father is an electrician turned college biology instructor.
High School, until dropping out at age 16 and getting a GED. He spent the next five years working as a bicycle mechanic and occasionally volunteering at Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Center.
At age 20, while taking college classes in Baltimore, Meyer decided to become a writer. He also decided to leave his hometown and at 22, after several attempts at applying to elite colleges, was admitted to Cornell University
. Meyer graduated Cornell with a degree in English but then took a job on Wall Street to pay off his student loans.
, Meyer trained in London and Zurich and was given a position as a derivative
s trader. After several years at UBS, he had written most of a novel (no relation to American Rust) and decided to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. When attempts at publishing that novel failed, a book he has called “an apprentice-level work,” Meyer took jobs as an emergency medical technician and construction worker. He was preparing for a long-term career as a paramedic when, in 2005, he received a fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers
in Austin, Texas
, where he wrote the majority of American Rust
.
Not long after arriving in Austin, Meyer drove to New Orleans to do relief work during Hurricane Katrina
. He arrived in the middle of the hurricane and spent several days doing emergency medical work for a local police department.
In 2010, Meyer was named in the New Yorker's list '20 under 40', their once every decade list of the 20 writers under the age of 40 that it feels are tipped for great things. In an interview to coincide with the publication of the list and his inclusion on it, Meyer revealed that he is currently working on a second novel concerning "...the rise of a Texas ranching-and-oil dynasty across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries." Whereas for Meyer "“American Rust” was about that part of America whose time has passed, the part that’s on the decline." the new novel "...will be about the part of America that is still on the rise."
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/06/14/100614fi_fiction_20under40_qa_philipp-meyer#ixzz14yvIzdf5
was a winner of the 2009 Los Angeles Times
Book Prize. It was an Economist
Book of the Year in 2009, a Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2009, a New York Times Notable Book of 2009, on Newsweek
's List of "Best. Books. Ever.", a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Best Book of 2009, an Idaho Statesman
Top Book of 2009, a Kansas City Star Top 100 Book of 2009, a Daily Beast Favorite Book of 2009, and an Amazon Top 100 Book of 2009. Reviewers in the UK's Telegraph, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, and Dayton Daily News
have suggested it fits the category of "Great American Novel." The bulk of American Rust was written during Meyer’s time at the Michener Center (2005-2008). In December 2007 an early version of American Rust was acquired by Spiegel & Grau, a Random House
imprint. Between December 2007 and May 2008, Meyer made significant changes to the manuscript, lengthening the book by 30%. Further significant changes were made between the version published as the advanced readers copy (based on the May 2008 manuscript) and the final hardback (based on changes made between May 2008 and October 2008). American Rust has been bought by publishers in sixteen countries and scheduled for translation into eleven languages. It is a third person, stream-of-consciousness narrative influenced, according to Meyer, by writers such as James Joyce
, William Faulkner
, Virginia Woolf
, and James Kelman
. While a reviewer in The Baltimore Sun
compared the novel to the work of Faulkner, various other reviewers, including Michiko Kakutani
of The New York Times
, Ron Charles of The Washington Post
, and Taylor Antrim
writing in The Daily Beast
, have favorably compared Meyer to a wide variety of more traditional writers, including Cormac McCarthy
, Ernest Hemingway
, John Steinbeck
, J.D. Salinger, and Dennis Lehane
.
(Philipp Meyer novel), will be published in Fall of 2012. The novel has been described in advanced press as "an epic of Texas", with the plot concerning "three generations of a Texas family: Eli, his son Pete and Pete’s daughter Jeanne. Each face their own challenges—Comanche raiders, border wars and a changing civilization, respectively."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
fiction writer, born in 1974, and is the author of the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
American Rust
American Rust
American Rust is a novel written by the American writer Philipp Meyer and published in 2009 in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and The Netherlands ; in 2010 it will be published in France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Israel, Greece, and Serbia...
, as well as short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
published in McSweeney’s Quarterly
Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern
Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is a literary journal, first published in 1998, edited by Dave Eggers. The first issue featured only works rejected by other magazines, but thereafter the journal began to include pieces written with McSweeney's in mind. McSweeney’s has since published works by...
, The Iowa Review
The Iowa Review
The Iowa Review is an American literary magazine that publishes fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews.Founded in 1970, this magazine is issued three times a year, during the months of April, August, and December. Originally, it was released on a quarterly basis. This frequency of publication lasted...
, and Esquire UK. Meyer is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
. He grew up in Hampden, a blue-collar Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood often featured in the films of John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
. His mother is an artist; his father is an electrician turned college biology instructor.
Education
Meyer attended Baltimore city public schools, including Baltimore City CollegeBaltimore City College
The Baltimore City College , also referred to as The Castle on the Hill, historically as The College, and most commonly City, is a public high school in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. The City College curriculum includes the International Baccalaureate Programme and emphasizes study in the classics...
High School, until dropping out at age 16 and getting a GED. He spent the next five years working as a bicycle mechanic and occasionally volunteering at Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Center.
At age 20, while taking college classes in Baltimore, Meyer decided to become a writer. He also decided to leave his hometown and at 22, after several attempts at applying to elite colleges, was admitted to Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. Meyer graduated Cornell with a degree in English but then took a job on Wall Street to pay off his student loans.
Career
With the Swiss investment bank UBSUBS AG
UBS AG is a Swiss global financial services company headquartered in Basel and Zürich, Switzerland, which provides investment banking, asset management, and wealth management services for private, corporate, and institutional clients worldwide, as well as retail clients in Switzerland...
, Meyer trained in London and Zurich and was given a position as a derivative
Derivative (finance)
A derivative instrument is a contract between two parties that specifies conditions—in particular, dates and the resulting values of the underlying variables—under which payments, or payoffs, are to be made between the parties.Under U.S...
s trader. After several years at UBS, he had written most of a novel (no relation to American Rust) and decided to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. When attempts at publishing that novel failed, a book he has called “an apprentice-level work,” Meyer took jobs as an emergency medical technician and construction worker. He was preparing for a long-term career as a paramedic when, in 2005, he received a fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers
Michener Center for Writers
The Michener Center for Writers is an interdisciplinary Masters of Fine Arts program in fiction, poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin.-History:...
in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, where he wrote the majority of American Rust
American Rust
American Rust is a novel written by the American writer Philipp Meyer and published in 2009 in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and The Netherlands ; in 2010 it will be published in France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Israel, Greece, and Serbia...
.
Not long after arriving in Austin, Meyer drove to New Orleans to do relief work during Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
. He arrived in the middle of the hurricane and spent several days doing emergency medical work for a local police department.
In 2010, Meyer was named in the New Yorker's list '20 under 40', their once every decade list of the 20 writers under the age of 40 that it feels are tipped for great things. In an interview to coincide with the publication of the list and his inclusion on it, Meyer revealed that he is currently working on a second novel concerning "...the rise of a Texas ranching-and-oil dynasty across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries." Whereas for Meyer "“American Rust” was about that part of America whose time has passed, the part that’s on the decline." the new novel "...will be about the part of America that is still on the rise."
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/06/14/100614fi_fiction_20under40_qa_philipp-meyer#ixzz14yvIzdf5
American Rust
American RustAmerican Rust
American Rust is a novel written by the American writer Philipp Meyer and published in 2009 in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and The Netherlands ; in 2010 it will be published in France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Israel, Greece, and Serbia...
was a winner of the 2009 Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
Book Prize. It was an Economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
Book of the Year in 2009, a Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2009, a New York Times Notable Book of 2009, on 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...
's List of "Best. Books. Ever.", a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also known simply as the "PG," is the largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.-Early history:...
Best Book of 2009, an Idaho Statesman
Idaho Statesman
The Idaho Statesman is a U.S. daily newspaper serving the Boise, Idaho metropolitan area. The paper has a circulation of 61,000 daily, 83,038 Sunday, and employs about 300 people. It is owned by The McClatchy Company....
Top Book of 2009, a Kansas City Star Top 100 Book of 2009, a Daily Beast Favorite Book of 2009, and an Amazon Top 100 Book of 2009. Reviewers in the UK's Telegraph, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, and Dayton Daily News
Dayton Daily News
The Dayton Daily News is a daily newspaper published in Dayton, Ohio. It is owned by Cox Enterprises. In the 2010 Associated Press Society of Ohio newspaper competition that takes place every year, DaytonDailyNews.com was named "the best large-newspaper web site in Ohio".-History:On August 15,...
have suggested it fits the category of "Great American Novel." The bulk of American Rust was written during Meyer’s time at the Michener Center (2005-2008). In December 2007 an early version of American Rust was acquired by Spiegel & Grau, a Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
imprint. Between December 2007 and May 2008, Meyer made significant changes to the manuscript, lengthening the book by 30%. Further significant changes were made between the version published as the advanced readers copy (based on the May 2008 manuscript) and the final hardback (based on changes made between May 2008 and October 2008). American Rust has been bought by publishers in sixteen countries and scheduled for translation into eleven languages. It is a third person, stream-of-consciousness narrative influenced, according to Meyer, by writers such as James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, and James Kelman
James Kelman
James Kelman is an influential writer of novels, short stories, plays and political essays. His novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989...
. While a reviewer in The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries....
compared the novel to the work of Faulkner, various other reviewers, including Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Ron Charles of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, and Taylor Antrim
Taylor Antrim
Taylor Antrim is a writer and editor best known for his debut novel The Headmaster Ritual. Antrim is a graduate of Stanford University, and received his MFA from the University of Virginia. His journalism and reviews have appeared in Esquire, The Village Voice, and The New York Times...
writing in The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website founded and published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as well as the short-lived Talk Magazine. The Daily Beast was launched on October 6, 2008, and is owned by IAC...
, have favorably compared Meyer to a wide variety of more traditional writers, including Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and modernist genres. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
, J.D. Salinger, and Dennis Lehane
Dennis Lehane
Dennis Lehane is an American author. He has written several award-winning novels, including A Drink Before the War and the New York Times bestseller Mystic River, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film. Another novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, was also adapted into an Academy...
.
The Son
In late 2011. Philipp Meyer's official website announced the forthcoming release of his second novel. The novel, titled The SonThe Son
The Son is a five-act Expressionist play by the German playwright Walter Hasenclever. It was the first self-proclaimed, full-length Expressionist play to be produced, though its dramatic structure is more or less realistic. It takes as its subject the conflict between the generations and a...
(Philipp Meyer novel), will be published in Fall of 2012. The novel has been described in advanced press as "an epic of Texas", with the plot concerning "three generations of a Texas family: Eli, his son Pete and Pete’s daughter Jeanne. Each face their own challenges—Comanche raiders, border wars and a changing civilization, respectively."