I believe that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration, whom we call artists. My writing philosophy is, not surprisingly, a kind of warrior code - internal rather than external - in which the enemy is identified as those forms of self-sabotage that I have labeled 'Resistance' with a capital R (in THE WAR OF ART) and the technique for combatting these foes can be described as 'turning pro.' With the publication of THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE in 1995, I became a writer of books once and for all. I have picked fruit in Washington state and written screenplays in Tinseltown. I have worked as an advertising copywriter, schoolteacher, tractor-trailer driver, bartender, oilfield roustabout and attendant in a mental hospital. My struggles to earn a living as a writer (it took seventeen years to get the first paycheck) are detailed in my 2002 book, THE WAR OF ART. TIDES OF WAR is on the curriculum of the Naval War College.įrom 2nd Battalion/6th Marines, which calls itself 'the Spartans,' to ODA 316 of the Special Forces, whose forearms are tattooed with the lambda of Lakedaemon, today's young warriors find a bond to their ancient precursors in the historical narratives of these novels. It is taught at West Point and Annapolis and at the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico.

GATES OF FIRE is on the Commandant of the Marine Corps' Reading list.

troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since the first days of the invasions. Dog-eared paperbacks of this tale of the ancient Spartans have circulated throughout platoons of U.S. 'No matter what happens to me for the rest of my life, no one can ever send me back to this freakin' place again.'įorty years later, to my surprise and gratification, I am far more closely bound to the young men of the Marine Corps and to all other dirt-eating, ground-pounding outfits than I could ever have imagined. In January of 1966, when I was on the bus leaving Parris Island as a freshly-minted Marine, I looked back and thought there was at least one good thing about this departure. I graduated from Duke University in 1965. I was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1943 to a Navy father and mother.

The war of art author