John Nichols
Chicago Tribune
JOHN NICHOLS - American Author
John Nichols (i.e. yours truly) has published twenty-four books (13 novels, 11 works of non-fiction) and once spent twenty years writing Hollywood screenplays, great work if you can get it. Where did the money go...? Your guess is as good as mine.
I published my first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo (1965) when I was 24. My most recent novel, The Annual Big Arsenic Fishing Contest, hit bookstores just after my 76th birthday in 2016. It's been a quick trip,
Alan Pakula directed a film of The Sterile Cuckoo, starring Liza Minelli who earned a 1969 Academy Award Nomination in her role as Pookie Adams. Robert Redford directed my third novel, The Milagro Beanfield War (1974), in a 1988 movie that starred Sonia Braga, Carlos Riquelme, Ruben Blades, Christopher Walken, Julie Carmen, Daniel Stern, Melanie Griffith, Freddy Fender and 800 other actors. I shared a credit on the script.
I also rewrote a picture for the Greek director, Costa-Gavras, called Missing (1982) that starred Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek
Minor factoid: My second novel, The Wizard of Loneliness (1966) was made into a 1988 film starring Lea Thompson, Lukas Haas, Lance Guest, Dylan Baker, and John Randolph.
I live in northern New Mexico. I've been married and divorced three times, helped raise two kids, and survived open-heart surgery in 1994. 1 am not to be confused with the other John Nichols, a younger version who writes for The Nation and other venues, and publishes books like It's the Media, Stupid and Dick: The Man Who is President. He's a great writer, and, like myself, politically progressive, but he did not write An Elegy for September, Conjugal Bliss, The Magic Journey, American Blood, The Nirvana Blues, A Ghost in the Music, or The Voice of the Butterfly, I did.
If you want want a rundown on the novels and non-fiction books I've published, click the tabs that say JOHN'S BOOKS. If you want to look up a bit of biographical stuff, click the tab marked BIOGRAPHY. If you're interested in a few critical REFERENCES, click that tab.
If you're an environmentalist and you think the human race can still save our planet from global warming, click the tab marked LOTSA LUCK.
I used to be the last writer in America without a website, but obviously this is no longer the case. However, I draw the line at e-mail and the Internet. If you want to get in touch with me for any reason you'll have to use snail mail. The address is:
You better hurry, though. As of February, 2022 I’m 81 years old, my heart is locked in A-fib, I’m still in terminal congestive heart failure, I take Lanoxin, carvedilol, coumadin and triamterene every day, and my doctor says my aortic valve is really sucking wind. And I've repeated this litany for the last decade.
John Nichols
P.O. Box 1165
Taos, New Mexico 87571
"John Nichols has all of Steinbeck's
gifts, the same overwhelming
compassion for people, plus an
even finer sense of humor, and the
need to celebrate the cause and
dignity of man ... “
Reissued in paperback by UNM Press in 2022.
_____________________________
My recent (2022) memoir celebrates the joy of writing mixed with dabs of failure and hilarious tragedies.
© Copyright John Nichols 2022