His distinguished colleagues included novelist Oakley Hall, Victorian scholar and poet Robert Peters, and literary critic Hillis Miller.
Publishers Weekly has described his work as "known for...metaphysics, hints of magic and the absurd, and a profound preoccupation with the duality of human nature,"[citation needed] and the Chicago Tribune Book World called him "a gifted craftsman, a meticulous writer whose powers as a story teller are as compelling as the sexual tensions he imagines.
"[citation needed] His novel The Balloonist, published in 1976 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, tells the story of a polar expedition, similar to and possibly inspired by the real journey made by S. A. Andrée.
It was reissued in 2011 by the UK publisher Galileo[2] and in 2012 in the United States by The Overlook Press, with a foreword by Philip Pullman and positive reviews from The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
[3][4][5] The Overlook Press also published his previously-unpublished novel The Carp Castle in 2013,[6] and reissued his novel Screenplay (1982) in 2014, reviewed as "the mature work of a writer whose ability to juggle multi-layered concepts seems effortless.