“Life is a means of extracting fiction.”

The above quote comes from Brooklyn born Robert Stone, one of the great novelists of the last half-century, who passed away on Saturday at his home in Key West at the age of 77. Stone’s most recent novel was 2013’s fine The Death of the Black Haired Girl, but he’ll likely always be best known for his 1974 novel Dog Soldiers, which won the National Book Award.

Dog Soldiers was adapted by Stone himself for Karel Reisz’s 1978 film Who’ll Stop The Rain, starring Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld and Michael Moriarty. As literary adaptations go (aside from the asinine title change), it’s quite effective, retaining Stone’s strong dialogue and weary world-view. His other books of fiction included his first novel, 1967’s A Hall of Mirrors, 1981’s A Flag For Sunrise, 1992’s Outerbridge Reach, the 1997 short story collection Bear and His Daughter (which includes his widely-lauded, gut-wrenching story “Helping”) and his 1998 novel Damascus Gate.

I’ll never forget spending that Yankees-filled summer of 1998 lugging my hardcover copy of Stone’s 500 page novel back and forth to the beach. He also published a memoir of his early years in 2007, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, which touched on his friendship with fellow novelist Ken Kesey as well as his time spent in New Orleans as an encyclopedia salesman among other episodes. Wherever Stone traveled and whatever subjects he took on, his interests and point of view were uniquely American and not by accident. As he stated in an interview with The Paris Review from 1985:

“What I’m always trying to do is define that process in American life that puts people in a state of anomie, of frustration. The national promise is so great that a tremendous bitterness is evoked by its elusiveness. That was Fitzgerald’s subject, and it’s mine. So many people go bonkers in this country—I mean, they’re doing all the right things and they’re still not getting off.”

Earlier in the interview, he states, “That is my subject. America and Americans.” From his first novel to his last, few have ever written about them as well.