Background
Robert Bausch was born on April 18, 1945, in Fort Benning, Georgia. He was the son of Robert Carl, in business, and Helen Bausch.
1974
Richard and Robert Bausch (left)
1982
Robert Bausch
Richard and Robert Bausch (left)
Robert Bausch
Robert Bausch
Robert Bausch
Robert Bausch
Robert Bausch
Robert Bausch
Robert Bausch
(Emotionally scarred by long internment in a Vietnamese pr...)
Emotionally scarred by long internment in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, Michael Sumner tries to reestablish normal relations with his parents, who were originally told he was dead.
https://www.amazon.com/Way-Home-Robert-Bausch/dp/0312584598
1982
(When Charlie Wiggins, a thirty-five-year-old car salesman...)
When Charlie Wiggins, a thirty-five-year-old car salesman, is given the power of God for one year, he sets out to put the world to rights, but he soon discovers that even omnipotence has its limitations.
https://www.amazon.com/Almighty-Me-Robert-Bausch/dp/039556266X
1991
(At the heart of this compelling novel about why men act t...)
At the heart of this compelling novel about why men act the way they do is the profound and affecting story of a family, of what tears them apart and what can bring them back together.
https://www.amazon.com/Hole-Earth-Robert-Bausch/dp/0156011840
2000
(The motto of Crawford, Virginia, might well be Beware wha...)
The motto of Crawford, Virginia, might well be Beware what you fear, because it may come true. Penny Bone is terrified of the town's local legend of a child-stealing phantom. Henry Gault, her six-year-old daughter's teacher, scoffs at the tale, trusting in reason and foresight to safeguard what is most precious to him. Penny's husband, John, is in prison for an accidental murder that happened because he was trying to be too careful. And in prison, he will, almost accidentally, become a hero, which makes him prey to what he fears most-hope. An eerie succession of events will take these people into the bull's-eye of risk that everyday life presents.
https://www.amazon.com/Gypsy-Man-Robert-Bausch/dp/0151001723
2002
(When Skip Granger, the assistant coach for the Washington...)
When Skip Granger, the assistant coach for the Washington Redskins, first sees Jesse Smoke, she is on the beach in Belize. And she has just thrown a regulation football a mile. Granger knows that Smoke's talent is unprecedented for a woman, and nearly unparalleled among men. As Granger observes her throughout a season as quarterback for the Washington Divas of the Independent Women's Football League, he decides to sign her to the Redskins, even as he faces losing his job and credibility.
https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Jesse-Smoke-Robert-Bausch/dp/1632863979
2012
(Bobby Hale is a Union veteran several times over. After t...)
Bobby Hale is a Union veteran several times over. After the war, he sets his sights on California, but only makes it to Montana. As he stumbles around the West, from the Wyoming Territory to the Black Hills of the Dakotas, he finds meaning in the people he meets, settlers and native people, and the violent history he both participates in and witnesses.
https://www.amazon.com/Far-as-Eye-Can-See/dp/1511310502
2014
Robert Bausch was born on April 18, 1945, in Fort Benning, Georgia. He was the son of Robert Carl, in business, and Helen Bausch.
Robert Bausch attended Belt Junior High School. Then, in 1963 he graduated from Wheaton High School. Later, Bausch studied at the University of Illinois and Northern Virginia Community College. At George Mason University, Robert Bausch received a Bachelor of Arts in 1974, a Master of Arts in 1975, and a Master of Fine Arts in 2001. Besides, Robert Bausch was enrolled in a correspondence school to study law and was making plans to attend Santa Monica City College in the fall of 1965. He completed the course and received a Bachelor of Laws in 1965, but he never was a lawyer.
While Robert Bausch was in college, he worked various odd jobs. He drove a taxi one year, worked as a waiter for two days, sold appliances in a discount store. Duris his service at the United States Air Force, he was an instructor in survival tactics. Bausch worked in the public library during his senior year of college as a member of the circulation department. When he was in graduate school, he took the job of a teacher in a small private high school in Fairfax, Glebe Acres Prep School. Since 1974, he has taught English and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa, George Mason University, the University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee, Beloit College, Stanford University, and Chapman University. In 1975 he went right from graduate school to the Northern Virginia Community College. He worked sporadically until 1987 when he made a momentous decision concerning his life's work as a teacher. Bausch quit his job at George Mason University, took a leave of absence from Northern Virginia Community College, and began a year teaching creative writing at American University in Washington. In 1994 Bausch went back to the American University in Washington. He has also taught at the Algonkian Writers Conference and served as a director on the board of the Poets, Editors, and Novelists/Faulkner Foundation.
Besides, Robert Bausch was a writer. In his novel, On the Way Home, he examines the difficulties in adjustment the Sumner family experiences after being told that their son Michael has been killed in action in Vietnam, and then finding out that he was actually taken prisoner and has managed to escape. Between these two events, however, Dale Sumner retires from the Chicago police force and moves with his wife to Florida in an attempt to start a new life away from reminders of Michael. Just as the Sumners have begun to accept Michael's death, he returns. The typically difficult period of readjustment to civilian life is compounded for the Sumners by the fact that Michael's new surroundings offer no positive link to his prewar existence. Withdrawn and uncommunicative, Michael angers his father, who is unable to understand why there is no hint of improvement in his son. Dale also suffers from a growing fear that his son might commit an insane act of violence, a fear that rises when one of Michael's female friends disappears.
In A Hole in the Earth Robert, Bausch presents the story of Henry Porter, a history teacher in Washington. Henry must cope with several overwhelming domestic crises at the same time while failing to realize his own level of maturity has never progressed beyond late adolescence. Porter's eighteen-year-old daughter, who he has not seen in six years, shows up with her boyfriend and announces they will be spending the summer with him. Then Porter's girlfriend reveals that she is pregnant. While clumsily dealing with both situations, Porter harasses by the belief that his father would disapprove of his lifestyle, which includes frequent visits to the racetrack and a general lack of concern for life's severe consequences. His attempts to reconcile with his daughter and settle issues with his girlfriend finally lead Porter to a painful understanding of his own failings.
The White Rooster and Other Stories gathers together ten of Robert Bausch's stories. Among the stories are Vigilance, in which a policeman and a mailman burglarize homes to rouse their neighbors to form a crime prevention squad. Family Lore is about a young girl witnessing her father's humiliation at the hands of his cruel brothers, and Cougar, telling of an insomniac who withdraws to the quiet of the north woods.
The Gypsy Man is a novel of a tight-knit community in Virginia's the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1950s. The townspeople descend into suspicion and superstition after the accidental death of a young black girl and the disappearance of a young boy who just happened to be the first black student to integrate the town's school. Some see the disappearance as evidence of the racial strife rising across the country, but other beliefs it is the work of the legendary gypsy man, a mysterious figure who kidnaps children for no apparent reason. Penny Bone, whose husband John is in prison for killing the young girl, serves as the novel's moral center. Forced to raise her daughter, Tory, alone while her husband serves his twenty-year prison sentence, Penny is at center stage during the crisis. Penny's libidinous aunt, with whom she runs the town's grocery store, is seduced by a psychopathic murderer who escapes from the prison where John Bone has just saved the life of a guard. John expects his good deed will lead to an early release, but the discovery of the body of the missing boy on the Bones' property derails that plan. With multiple narrators, including the psychopathic murderer himself, The Gypsy Man defies the conventions of most suspense novels in a way that pleased the critics.
Another book, Funerals, is the story of two funerals, one in summer and the other in winter. The summer funeral is for a young man killed in Vietnam, and the winter one is for an aged man, a World War I veteran. In the story, a young man on a military honors team remembers an earlier winter funeral, waiting for the summer one to begin. The winter funeral was a disaster: ill-attended, the honors team ill-prepared, nothing went right. The firing squad misunderstood the commands of the new squad leader, and some of them fired their guns at the wrong time. The young man should present the flag to the dead man's widow, who is young and beautiful and whose tears hurt the young man so much all he wants to do is tell her that her husband is not dead. When he presents her the flag and tries to console her with the sound of his voice expressing his nation's cliches about service to country and comrades and loved ones, she throws the flag back at him.
(When Charlie Wiggins, a thirty-five-year-old car salesman...)
1991(Emotionally scarred by long internment in a Vietnamese pr...)
1982(At the heart of this compelling novel about why men act t...)
2000(When Skip Granger, the assistant coach for the Washington...)
2012(A brilliantly observed prep school novel about fraught te...)
2011(The motto of Crawford, Virginia, might well be Beware wha...)
2002(Bobby Hale is a Union veteran several times over. After t...)
2014Robert Bausch was a lapsed Roman Catholic. He said that he "believed in people."
Robert Bausch was a Liberal. He mistrusted most institutions. John Fitzgerald Kennedy's death did to Robert Bausch's sense of the future. He made up his mind that he wanted to get into politics and work toward what he believed Kennedy labored. Bausch remembered the "world of diversity" speech Kennedy made at American University, and he came to see himself as a convert to the idea.
Quotations:
"All fear is real. No matter what or who produces it."
"I am more a teacher than a writer since I derive as much satisfaction out of a good job there, and since I devote more of my time to teaching than writing. Writing is totally separate and by itself and doesn't seem to be influenced by things as crises, horrors, games, shows, or picnics in my life."
"I don't believe the saying "writers are born, not made." I also don't believe in any spirit or muse or any other Romantic notion about what drives a writer to write. I could stop writing tomorrow, increase my tennis time, and live quite contentedly for the rest of my life. I like it, however, that everybody thinks a writer is driven to his work by some demon inside him. I'm not sure why I like that, but I'm glad I like it. It may keep me writing."
"I began to examine how I looked at the world. I saw everything in terms of the arch of events, a movement in time toward some palpable denouement. The more I thought about things, the more I realized that I viewed my life as a kind of developing story. What happened to me was the plot. However, adolescents that may sound, it afforded me the luxury of trusting myself to go ahead and begin writing again. It seemed like the sort of development that would best serve the "plot" of my life."
Books, pipes and pipe tobaccos, music, art, video game - Pac Man, gambling, chess, cooking, organic gardening, movies, eating heart-attack food.
Actors: Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Gary Moore, Milton Berle, Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Martha Raye, George Burns, Gracie Allen
Eddie Izzard, David Letterman, Douglas Southall Freeman, Bruce Catton, Edwin O'Connor
Tennis, the Washington Redskins, horse racing, swimming, baseball, basketball
Robert Bausch married Geri Marrese on March 21, 1970, and divorced in 1982. They had three children, Sara Hadley, Julie Ann, and Suzanne Bausch. Then, Bausch married Denise Natt on August 14, 1982. They had a son, David Joseph Bausch.