Author Phil Condon got started late on the road to becoming a writer and has taken a number of divergent paths along the way. With the publication of his first novel, “Clay Center,” last year, Condon is being noticed in the literary world, winning a number of awards and receiving a starred review in Booklist.
And all of this is from a man who claims to have waited until his mid-30s to write seriously, although he doesn’t consider this late start a detriment.
“Since I didn’t start writing until much later than most people, I had already gone through many phases,” Condon said. “They all sort of blended together, so no single style or person really influenced me.”
Though Condon doesn’t point to any particular influence on his writing, he named a few influences that led to him writing.
“I think Henry Thoreau with ‘Walden,’ and also a lot of Russian writers, like Fyodor Dostoyevsky with ‘Crime and Punishment,’ kind of brought me toward writing,” Condon said. “I have always enjoyed writers who are very serious about life and death matters, who write seriously about big ideas.”
Condon said he tried to deal with these kinds of ideas in “Clay Center.” The novel, which takes place in the last few months of 1969, deals with members of the anti-war movement and the destruction of youthful idealism. For Condon, it was a topic he had been trying to grasp for some time.
“I was trying to get a feel for the end of the 1960s and trying to make sense and meaning out of that period,” Condon said. “Looking back on it, I began to see shapes and patterns that I didn’t see at the time. I began to feel that this was the book that I had to write before I could start a larger project.”
The public would not be adverse to another project from Condon, according to Condon’s literary publicist Judy McHale.
“The book has gotten a lot of good reviews and good feedback,” McHale said. “We’ve gotten requests from various media sources for copies of the book because they are interested in reviewing it, which is a pretty rare response for someone’s first novel.”
Condon ‘s renown doesn’t only stem from his literary accomplishments. A professor of environmental studies at the University of Montana, he directs the school’s Environmental Writing program, which is part of the reason he was chosen by the UO Bookstore to give a reading at the University.
“Writers who have come through his program are well respected and do well when they come through here,” UO Bookstore Author Events Coordinator Brian Juenemann said. “We think we can transcend that pattern by bringing him here.”
Phil Condon will be appearing at the Knight Library Browsing Room on Monday at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.