{"id":766,"date":"2026-08-03T05:08:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T05:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=766"},"modified":"2026-08-03T05:08:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T05:08:21","slug":"america-is-sinking-fast-john-leonard-and-todd-gitlin-on-robert-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=766","title":{"rendered":"\u2018America Is Sinking Fast\u2019: John Leonard and Todd Gitlin on Robert Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Books &amp; the Arts<\/li>\n<li>January 14, 2015<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>\u2018America Is Sinking Fast\u2019: John Leonard and Todd Gitlin on Robert Stone<\/h1>\n<h1>\u2018America Is Sinking Fast\u2019: John Leonard and Todd Gitlin on Robert Stone<\/h1>\n<h2>\n<p>\u201cStone may leave the country,\u201d the late essayist wrote of the late novelist, &amp;ldquotbut it\u2019s America confounded that he finds wherever he goes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=764\">The Weapons Manufacturer Next Door<\/a><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>January 14, 2015<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The acclaimed novelist Robert Stone died this week at 77 years old. One of his greatest critical champions was the late John Leonard, onetime literary editor of <em>The Nation<\/em>, began as follows:\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Call him Ishmael. Robert Stone returns from Melville and the raptures of the deep to tell us that God and history are both dead, America is sinking fast and manhood itself may be terminally diseased. America and manhood have always been his texts, through which looks, with a burning eye, for watermarks of larger purpose, coded meanings. Stone might leave the country (for Vietnam, for Central America, even Hollywood or Antarctica), but it\u2019s America confounded that he finds wherever he goes. And although there are plenty of women in his novels, they are doped to the gills, or tortured to martyrdom, or hang themselves and drown, while a man stands around construing his failure to heroize. It\u2019s as if this erstwhile Merry Prankster book by book were working his way backward, out of Mailer and Hemingway, until, of course, he arrives at Melville\u2019s <em>Isolato<\/em>. Like Ahab, Stone hounds God\u2014and discovers His absence.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Later in the review, Leonard wrote that \u201cthe last couple of hundred pages of <em>Outerbridge Reach<\/em>\u201d were \u201cas dazzling as anything in American literature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><p>Stone\u2019s next novel after <em>Outerbridge Reach<\/em>, <em>Damascus Gate<\/em>, was , by Todd Gitlin, whose review began:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It would be much too simple to say that a lot of Robert Stone\u2019s characters are stoned. Drugs are only their turnstiles. They get stoned, also, on going places they don\u2019t belong but can\u2019t stay away form. In six novels now, one of the major <em>oeuvres<\/em> in American letters of the past three decades, Stone is obsessed with the spiritual desperadoes, the overreachers, the uneasy riders, those who are tempted to go too far out\u2014to madness, riches, prizes, revolution, whatever they find out too late they can\u2019t get. These zealots are seekers at the end of their dope, stoned on freedom, jumping at chances to squander everything dear in exchange for something ineffable, searching for some transcendence that will leave unbelievers sprawling in the dust. The resulting tragedies take place in a Stone Country consisting exclusively of edges\u2014New Orleans, Vietnam, California, Central America, Mexico\u2019s West Coast, the open Atlantic. All but the last (from <em>Outerbridge Reach<\/em>) are furiously hot places, Boschian infernos where only outsiders dwell, and then only on the sufferance of the demons who diddle and drive them. The guilty and the innocent are lashed together, having been parachuted into a moral wilderness, left to deal obscurely in blasted landscapes under skies so big and empty they drive the weak to kill. It is as if Graham Greene were on street drugs, graced with a lyrical gift and a genius for dry anticlimax all at once. Stone is an ecstatic of disillusion.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><p>* * *<\/p>\n<p><em>Curious about how we covered something? E-mail me at <span>[email\u00a0protected]<\/span>. Subscribers to <\/em>The Nation<em> can access our fully searchable digital archive, which contains thousands of historic articles, essays and reviews, letters to the editor and editorials dating back to July 6, 1865.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=763\">The Weapons Manufacturer Next Door<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p><span> Richard Kreitner<svg>\n<\/svg><br \/>\n<\/span>Richard Kreitner is a contributing writer and the author of <em>Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America\u2019s Imperfect Union<\/em>. His writings are at richardkreitner.com.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=761\">WikiLeaking Covert Wars<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><span> Back Issues<\/span>Guided tours through the archive of America\u2019s oldest weekly.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\u2018America Is Sinking Fast\u2019: John Leonard and Todd Gitlin on Robert Stone - 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