John Gardner

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This article concerns the American literary novelist John Gardner. For other men with this name, see John Gardner (disambiguation).

John Champlin Gardner, Jr. (born July 21, 1933, Batavia, New York; died September 14, 1982, near Susquehanna, Pennsylvania) was an American novelist and university teacher. He was a popular and controversial figure until his death in a motorcycle accident at the age of 49.

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[edit] Early life and education

Gardner's father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer; his mother taught English at a local school. His parents were very influential in his life. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April 1945 when Gardner was 11, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried the guilty feeling of responsibility for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks; the incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism—most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption", which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.[1]

Gardner began his university education at DePauw University, but received his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1955. He received his M.A. from the University of Iowa.

[edit] Fiction

Gardner's most popular novels were The Sunlight Dialogues, about a brooding, disenchanted policeman who is asked to engage a madman fluent in classical mythology, and Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf legend from the monster's point of view. Both books feature brutish figures struggling for integrity and understanding.

[edit] Teaching and criticism

Gardner was a lifelong teacher of fiction writing. He was a favorite at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His two books on the craft of writing ficiton—The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist—are considered classics. He was famously obsessive with his work, and acquired a reputation for advanced craft, smooth rhythms, and careful attention to the continuity of the fictive dream. At one level or another, his books nearly always touched on the redemptive power of art.

In 1978, Gardner's book of literary criticism, On Moral Fiction, sparked a controversy that excited the mainstream media, vaulting Gardner into the spotlight with an interview on The Dick Cavett Show (May 16, 1978) and a cover story on The New York Times Magazine (July, 1979). His judgments of contemporary authors, which could be termed one or more of direct, courageous, and unflattering, harmed his relations with many in the publishing industry.

In 1994, Stewart O'Nan published "On Writers and Writing" a posthumous collection of Gardner's essays and reviews. His friend and former student Charles Johnson wrote an introduction that can be appreciated by the wider reading public.

Gardner both inspired and intimidated his writing students. At Chico State University, when a young Raymond Carver mentioned to Gardner that he had read, but not liked, the assigned short story, Robert Penn Warren's "Blackberry Winter," Gardner said without smiling "You'd better read it again." Yet on another occasion, when Gardner saw that Carver needed a place to write undisturbed, Gardner gave him a key to his office.

The following anecdote, related in his On Becoming a Novelist, illustrates Gardner's combative personality. Once he went to the office of New York book editor David Segal carrying three substantial novel manuscripts, and wearing a black motorcycle jacket. He placed the manuscripts on Segal's desk, saying: "Mr. Segal, I'd like you to read these novels... now."

[edit] Scholarship

In 1977, Gardner published The Life and Times of Chaucer. In a review in the October 1977 issue of Speculum, Sumner J. Ferris pointed to several passages that were lifted either in whole or in part from work by other authors without proper citation. Ferris charitably suggested that Gardner had published the book too hastily, but on April 10, 1978, reviewer Peter Prescott, writing in Newsweek, accused Gardner of plagiarism, insinuations that were met by Gardner "with a sigh".

[edit] Cancer

On December 10, 1977, Gardner was hospitalized with colon cancer. He remained in Johns Hopkins Hospital for about a month and a half.

[edit] Family life

Gardner married cousin Joan Louise Patterson on June 6, 1953; the marriage saw children but ended in divorce. Gardner married the poet Elizabeth Rosenberg in 1980, but this marriage also ended in divorce. His fatal motorcycle crash came days before he was to marry Susan Thornton. (Her On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner, published in 2000, is a memoir of her relationship with Gardner.)

Gardner is buried next to his brother Gilbert in Batavia's Grandview Cemetery.

[edit] Books by Gardner

[edit] Fiction

  • The Resurrection
  • The Wreckage of Agathon
  • Grendel
  • The Sunlight Dialogues
  • Jason and Medeia
  • Nickel Mountain
  • The King's Indian
  • October Light
  • In the Suicide Mountains (1977)
  • Freddy's Book
  • The Art of Living and Other Stories
  • Mickelsson's Ghosts
  • The King's Indian: Stories and Tales

[edit] Biography

  • The Life and Times of Chaucer

[edit] Children's stories

  • Dragon, Dragon (and Other Tales) (1975)
  • Gudgekin The Thistle Girl (and Other Tales) (1976)

[edit] Didactic

  • The Poetry of Chaucer
  • On Moral Fiction
  • On Becoming a Novelist
  • The Art of Fiction

[edit] Translation

  • Gilgamesh (with John Maier)

[edit] Essays and reviews

  • On Writers and Writing

[edit] References

  1. ^ (1990) Allan Chavkin: Conversations with John Gardner. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 0-87805-422-7.

[edit] External links


Works by John Gardner
Fiction: Grendel ǀ The Sunlight Dialogues ǀ The Resurrection ǀ The Wreckage of Agathon ǀ Jason and Medeia ǀ Nickel Mountain ǀ The King's Indian ǀ October Light ǀ Freddy's Book ǀ Mickelsson's Ghosts

Short Stories : The Art of Living ǀ The King's Indian ǀ Dragon, Dragon ǀ Gudgekin The Thistle Girl
Biography: The Life and Times of Chaucer
Didactic: The Poetry of Chaucer ǀ On Moral Fiction ǀ On Becoming a Novelist ǀ The Art of Fiction
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