John Crowley, an author of sweeping fantastical narratives whose ability to blend such disparate material as American history, dreams of lost utopias and “Alice in Wonderland”-tinged occult allowed him to transcend the fantasy genre in novels like “Little, Big,” which the critic Harold Bloom called a “neglected masterpiece,” died on Sunday at his home in Conway, Mass. He was 83.
His wife, Laurie Block, said the cause was complications of dysphasia and dementia.
The author of 14 novels and 10 volumes of essays and short fiction, Mr. Crowley explored a considerable range of subjects and genres. His first novel, “The Deep” (1975), was set on a disc-shaped world and involved a war between two factions, the Reds and the Blacks, loosely based on the 15th-century War of the Roses in England.
Even his most straightforward, realistic novel, “Four Freedoms” (2009), about the workers at an airplane factory in Oklahoma during World War II, is an alternative history of the home front, in which Americans of marginalized identities — Black Americans, women, disabled people — find themselves liberated by a common purpose.
His work drew comparisons to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Thomas Pynchon; reviewers recognized notes of Dante, Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll. Writing in The Washington Post in 2000, the critic Michael Dirda called Mr. Crowley “arguably the most original and accomplished American fantasy writer ever.”
Despite his wide range, certain themes persisted. He was consistently interested in the way that narrative shapes perception; in the sometimes murky line between fantasy and reality; and in the possibility, as he wrote in his 1987 novel, “Aegypt” (eventually republished as “The Solitudes”), that “there is more than one history of the world.”
“Little, Big,” Mr. Crowley’s fourth novel, was his best known and most widely read. Its plot revolves around the long marriage of Smoky Barnable and Daily Alice Drinkwater, which plays out against a tableau of urban decay, a fascist takeover of the United States and a rural manse that offers a gateway to a realm of fairies and, possibly, a redemptive future.
Any summary of its plot makes it sound twee; in fact, it is an achingly melancholic and deeply humane meditation on mortality and memory.
Like all Mr. Crowley’s books, “Little, Big” reads almost like a fable, starting with its first sentence: “On a certain day in June, 19—, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited.”
Mr. Crowley continued, “His name was Smoky Barnable, and he was going to Edgewood to get married; the fact that he walked and didn’t ride was one of the conditions placed on his coming there at all.”
The poet James Merrill was a gushing fan of “Little, Big,” and arranged for Mr. Crowley to receive a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, which Mr. Merrill directed. The eminent fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin said that it “calls for a redefinition of fantasy.” Mr. Bloom, the critic, wrote that it was “literally the most enchanting 20th-century book I know.”
It was named the best novel at the 1982 World Fantasy Awards, the highest prize in the genre.
Mr. Crowley was unafraid of boldly original stories and sprawling epics. The four books in his “Aegypt” cycle, written over two decades, follow the waking and dream life of a historian named Pierce Moffett, with parallel story lines set during the Renaissance. His 2017 novel “Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr” centers on a sentient, immortal crow as it follows the course of human history.
“The kind of fiction that always interested me,” Mr. Crowley told The Believer magazine in 2009, “is stuff that somehow manages to be convincingly actual — in the sense that you believe that truths are being told about the world you live in — and are also somehow connected to the imaginary in some way.”
John Michael Crowley was born on Dec. 1, 1942, in Presque Isle, Maine, where his father, Joseph, was a doctor with the Army. His mother, Patience (Lyon) Crowley, managed the home and later worked as a librarian.
The family moved frequently because of Dr. Crowley’s work, living in Vermont, eastern Kentucky and finally Indiana.
Though he at times dreamed of becoming an archaeologist or a set designer, Mr. Crowley studied English at Indiana University. As a freshman, he was a member of the university’s quiz team, which won the 1961 G.E. College Bowl, an event broadcast on national television.
After graduating in 1965, he moved to New York, where he wrote documentary screenplays.
He moved to western Massachusetts in the mid-1970s, where he began writing fiction. He continued to write documentaries, eventually joining his wife, Ms. Block, in forming Straight Ahead Pictures, a nonprofit production company.
His film scripts include “The World of Tomorrow” (1984), about the 1939 World’s Fair, and, with Ms. Block, “Fit: Episodes in the History of the Body” (1991), about American fitness culture.
Mr. Crowley and Ms. Block married in 1984. He is survived by their children, Hazel and Zander Crowley, and his sister, Jo Busha.
Thanks to the presence on the Yale English faculty of two of his great admirers, the poet John Hollander and Mr. Bloom, Mr. Crowley became a lecturer there in 1993, retiring in 2018.
Mr. Crowley insisted to his students and readers that fantasy was, at its heart, no different from any other genre, and could achieve greatness if it followed the rules of literature.
“To actually articulate a way of being in a literary world without boundaries between reality and fantasy — it can’t just be a bunch of craziness and surreal carrying on,” he told Locus magazine in 2010.
He added, “Fantasy fiction at bottom, or at its best, is about making true fictions by the rules, in worlds you make up out of whole cloth, or out of your heart.”
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