Steven Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét was an American poet and author, born in 1898. His is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," and "By the Waters of Babylon." A line of Benét's poetry would later give the title to Dee Brown's famous history of the destruction of Native American tribes by the United States: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. He died of a heart attack in 1943.Available Works
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"By the Waters of Babylon" — short story, first published in 1937.
The story of a young man who must travel east as part of a coming-of-age ritual, I first read this short story in middle school, and have been haunted by the imagery ever since. Although nominally considered to be science fiction, it originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post with the title "The Place of the Gods."
