Books: Ozarks

(2 of 2)

The Author. Wiseacres say that when a chameleon is put on a crazy quilt, it becomes fatally confused. On the U. S. crazy-quilt, most smart writers stick safely to their native patches, or seek like colors. Not so 39-year-old Thames (pronounced not Tems but as it is spelled) Ross Williamson. Born on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho, son of a Welsh-Norwegian father, a French-Irish mother, his mixed inheritance has well prepared him for the kaleidoscopic environment from which he is emerging as an able guide to the patchwork of the U. S. scene. At 14 he ran away from home, was hobo, circus hand, cabin-boy on a whaler, sheepherder, newshawk. When he was private secretary to the Warden of Iowa's State Prison, and editing the prison magazine, one of the convicts reproved him for writing a sentimental story about a crook. Williamson took heed.

After working as interpreter (he speaks ten languages) under Jane Addams at Chicago's Hull House, Williamson suddenly decided he needed an education, won a Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Iowa, a Master's degree in Economics and Anthropology at Harvard. Onetime assistant professor of sociology at Smith College, he has published six textbooks. When he decided to become a novelist, he planned a Balzacian series on the U. S. panorama. Critics jeered at his third novel (The Man Who Cannot Die}, and Author Williamson made up his mind "to get off my literary high horse, to come down to earth and express myself simply." A fierce worker, he could easily write two novels a year, fills in his time by writing children's books. With his second wife he moves restlessly about the world; at present they are in Portugal. "Dark as a gypsy, nervous as a cat," he talks flippantly, fluently — "a sort of thinking elf."

Other books : Run Sheep Run, Hunky, The Earth Told Me, In Krusack's House, Sad Indian.