death_date death_place influenced birth_place influences nationality name birth_date spouse period genre article_title education birth_name occupation
13 july 2014 nyack , new york , united states jonathan lethem cincinnati , ohio , united states tobias herman melville , h. g. wells , franz kafka , smollett friedrich nietzsche , frank norris , vladimir nabokov , bob , and ray jonathan swift , mark twain , american thomas berger 20 july 1924 jeanne redpath 1958 -- 2014 literary fiction thomas berger -lrb- novelist -rrb-
 university of cincinnati , columbia university thomas louis berger novelist
thomas berger -lrb- novelist -rrb-

thomas louis berger -lrb- july 20 , 1924 -- july 13 , 2014 -rrb- was an american novelist .
probably best known for his picaresque novel `` little big man '' and the subsequent film by arthur penn , berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career , including the crime novel , the hard-boiled detective story , science fiction , the utopian novel , plus re-workings of classical mythology , arthurian legend , and the survival adventure .
berger 's use of humor , and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or `` comic '' novelist , descriptions he preferred to reject .
his admirers often bemoaned that his talent and achievement were under-appreciated , in view of his versatility across many forms of fiction , his precise use of language , and his probing intelligence .
