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Monthly publication of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Features include: Annual Report 1955, Old Tuscon, The Danish Mission, Outings and Family Solidarity, Sixty Years Ago, Lily N. Hortnagl Makes Handicraft Gifts for Many Occasions, Jesus Instructs the Nephites, Visiting Teacher Messages, Joseph Smith's Early Home Life, and many more. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

A Masterwork from a Master Craftsman
Beautiful book.

Here you'll find some of Gardner's most moving short fiction, such as "Redemption," about that accident on the farm when Gardner accidentally killed his brother.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves one of our greatest writers and teachers.

Justin Nicholes
Fiction Editor, Our Stories

Mediocre
John Gardner is best known for his reinterpretation of the Beowulf myth with his novel Grendel. It was during the late 1970s and early 1980s that his name recognition and reputation were at a zenith. Then, he died in a motorcycle accident, and his lesser contemporaries buried him critically, because they were now free to do so. In his life he had buried the inferior writing of many of his contemporaries, and like the cowards they were, payback was a bitch to a man six feet under.

That said, while the stories in the collection are good, with a couple occasional lapses into greatness, Gardner was a writer that may have not had much more in him, expansively speaking. Yes, all the tales involve artists as supposed moments of epiphany, but I wonder how a better writer would have handled the lesser tales....Overall, latter day poseurs like the PC Elitists embodied by Jhumpa Lahiri or PoMo frauds like David Foster Wallace couldn't come close to the best these tales offer, and the worst in this book is still a notch above the best they are even capable of. Gardner's main problem, when he fails, is not too much fat, merely wandering off the given trajectory of the narrative. His prose is not muscular, but lean and occasionally evocative. He is taut and focused at his best. He can write of dilettantes without a dilettantish air, like Updike, yet also humanize them. He can also write of lowlifes and treat them fairly, without moralizing- he is fair, but firm. He follows Anton Chekhov's urging to write objectively.

Read him that way, too.

A deeply sensitive writer
John Gardner wrote a collection of stories about people and their relationship with Art: a story about a conductor, a painter, a musician, a young lady working in an Art studio, a boy in a house full of choir singers , a cook etc. The humanity explored in these stories is illumed by the practice or appreciation of whatever form of art they endeavor.

Gardner is an amazing technical writer, so the prose is incredibly clear and evocative, the plots are water-proof tight, and the messages are so deep and convincing that you don't mind that they leave with an ambiguous feeling. And what's most unique about him, setting him aside from most of the writers I like, he doesn't write with a chip on his shoulder. He likes people. He is completely secure, and can make penetrating observations without being condescending. The result is a frank and beautiful collection and eloquent stories that all come together to form a little piece of heaven.

I think Art is grown up work and should be taken with due seriousness. This isn't light fiction, but it's nice to be reminded that grown up, serious fiction can also be uplifting.

A deeply sensitive writer
John Gardner wrote a collection of stories about people and their relationship with Art: a story about a conductor, a painter, a musician, a young lady working in an Art studio, a boy in a house full of choir singers , a cook etc. The humanity explored in these stories is illumed by the practice or appreciation of whatever form of art they endeavor.

Gardner is an amazing technical writer, so the prose is incredibly clear and evocative, the plots are water-proof tight, and the messages are so deep and convincing that you don't mind that they leave with an ambiguous feeling. And what's most unique about him, setting him aside from most of the writers I like, he doesn't write with a chip on his shoulder. He likes people. He is completely secure, and can make penetrating observations without being condescending. The result is a frank and beautiful collection and eloquent stories that all come together to form a little piece of heaven.

I don't like fluff. Puppies and babies are cute, but I think Art is grown up work and should be taken with due seriousness. This isn't light fiction, but it's nice to be reminded that grown up, serious fiction can also be uplifting. ... Read more

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When a British-owned aircraft is destroyed at Dulles Airpot, killing the almost four hundred passengers on board, including his old lover, the Principessa Sukie Tempesta, James Bond embarks on a personal quest to find the fanatical terrorists responsible. Reprint." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

James Bond
I bought this as a gift for my son.He is a collector and enjoyed the book very much.

Gardner's best mix of sex and violence for aBond story.
The plot is a little to Americanized because it has bond fighting COLD, a militia type group in the United States.Also you will have to read Nobody Lives Forever and Seafire to understand this one.Bond also gets over Fredricka Von Gruse a little to easily, but the sex and violence that make James Bond James Bond were plentiful.

Horrid
I've been a big James Bond fan for years and have read and re-read all the Ian Fleming and Kingsley Amis novels a number of times.Gardner's novels I've read exactly one time each and have never had a desire to pick any oneof them up again.

This one, however, was so bad that I couldn't evenfinish a first reading.It got so tedious that after finishing less thanone-third of the book I had to set it down.That was several years ago,and I haven't had any desire to pick it up again since.

It really is toobad that this had to happen because John Gardner really is a good novelistwhen he puts his heart into it.Sadly, though, his heart was never reallywith the Bond character.What's even worse for fans of the true IanFleming Bond, however, is the fact that the publisher passed the torch tothe truly horrid Raymond Benson.Benson's cartoon Bond is lifted straightfrom the movie screen and makes even Gardner's most mediocre books (likethis one) seem like works of genius.

Gardner's best outing as Bond.
Gardner's final Bond novel is most likely his best.I admit I may not be the best voice on the subject since this only the second Bond by Gardner I've read.The other one was Seafire.It is all plausible.A terroristgroup, COLD, destroys an airliner to silence a blackmailer.Bond is sentto investigate and uncover COLD: Children of the Last Days.It's suspectedthat an Italian mafia, the Tempesta, is also in this conspiracy.The Bond tradition at its best.

Unreadable
Ian Fleming must be rolling over in his grave.John Gardner's early efforts to resurrect the Bond character were respectable, but he peaked with the outstanding *Icebreaker* and has been doing nothing more thangoing through the motions ever since.This book was thoughtlessly throwntogether for no reason other than to fulfill a contract obligation.It'san embarrasment to the series, the publisher, and to Gardner's literarycareer. ... Read more

Product Description
The American novelist John Gardner died in a motorcycle accident in 1982. His novels, in which death and guilt are brooding presences, continue to attract attention. This study reviews Gardner's life and work, examining how his own tragic past prodded him to explore life's deepest mysteries. It breaks new ground by demonstrating how the philosophies of Susanne Langer and Alfred North Whitehead greatly influenced his thought. Gardner wrote that fiction is a vivid and continuous dream. Drawing on the fields of philosophy, religion, psychology, anthropology, and ritual studies, it becomes clear that the vision he would have us dream is a vision of peace, a Whiteheadian notion that says life is meaningful despite the ongoing presence of intractable evils like death and guilt. ... Read more

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John Gardner's most poignant novel of improbable love.

At the heart of John Gardner's Nickel Mountain is an uncommon love story: when at 42, the obese, anxious and gentle Henry Soames marries seventeen-year-old Callie Wells—who is pregnant with the child of a local boy—it is much more than years which define the gulf between them. But the beauty of this novel is the gradual revelation of the bond that develops as this unlikely couple experiences courtship and marriage, the birth of a son, isolation, forgiveness, work, and death in a small Catskill community in the 1950s. The plot turns on tragic events—they might be accidents or they might be acts of will—involving a cast of rural eccentrics tha includes a lonely amputee veteran, a religious hysteric (thought by some to be the devil himself) and an itinerant "Goat Lady." Questions of guilt, innocence, and even murder are eclipsed by deeds of compassion, humility, and redemption, and ultimately by Henry Soames' quiet discovery of grace.

Novelist William H. Gass, a friend and colleague of the author, has written an introduction that shines new light on the work and career of the much praised but often misunderstood John Gardner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Gracious and deep
'Nickel Mountain', my first encounter with John Gardner's work, was a wonderful experience of just how profound some of ourAmerican writers can be. This book is so distinctly American it couldn't be mistaken for anything else. Yet, despite it's regional idiosyncrasies, it manages to convey impressions of a deeper, more universal human quest for the intangible, yet all-important goal of psychological equilibrium, or grace.

The several main sections of the book are all inter-related in that they show how different characters experience and deal with the inevitable choices they are faced with in life. Some of the situations which prompt the choices are commonplace and some are dramatic, and even quite strange.

One thing that made the book work so well for me is that the rural characters Gardner created for his story seem so authentic. I say this as someone who remembers firsthand, as a child, the rapidly-receding 1950's, in which this story was set. The rural and small-town environments of those days before television and the other media had taken over and homogenized American life, produced some highly individualistic and eccentric characters, for whom you might search in vain in today's malls, discount stores, or fast-food joints.

This leads me to explain the "Gracious" element in my review title. To realize how lovingly and respectfully Gardner deals with his characters, you only have to contrast his style with that of Flannery O'Connor, another brilliant American author. O'Connor wrote in a manner which some call "Southern gothic", where the action is carried out by bizarre, eccentric types, in a generally dark, subtly menacing milieu. O'Connor deals also with deep moral and psychological issues, but the redneck hicks who illustrate her fables are treated in a satirical manner which invites you to laugh scornfully at their failings, even though they may eventually attain some form of enlightenment.

Gardner treats his characters as real human beings, although I believe we get a sense that they represent more than just their own individual existence. Not only does he make us privy to the workings of their consciences and imaginations; I think we also get a sense that he is sympathetic to their humanity, both it's weaknesses and strengths, and that he is rooting for the best in their natures to prevail, without proposing unrealistic scenarios. Gardner's characters are down-to-earth denizens of the rural Catskills of the 1950's, yet they are unique and exceptional, though the circumstances of their lives may be mundane.

The interface between external events and the imaginations of Gardner's people provides the reader with a wide range of human experience to ponder. The writing is in places so excellent with it's opposing light and dark imagery; it's portrayal of human effort to stave off the slow inexorable hostility of nature and its processes; it's depiction of the inner quest to find meaning and moral equilibrium; and it's rendering of attempts to deal with the absurdities and accidents of fate that plague every life, that I could only marvel at its originality and inventiveness. Besides the mundane and commonplace challenges of life, there are the dark, bizarre and sometimes absurdly humorous events that impinge on the consciousness of the players. I found myself wanting to laugh out loud in a few places at some of the outrageous, sometimes grotesque situations which developed, and the droll range of reactions of various characters. At other times I felt a resonating sadness or sense of mystery.

The book was important and meaningful to me because of the range of feeling it evoked and it's capacity to make me ponder on fundamental issues without it's being preachy or overtly allegorical. This story of an obese diner operator, his young wife, his son, his friends and acquaintances among farmers and truckers, and a couple of quite bizarre individuals thrown into the mix, somehow generates a profound and memorable impression of the human condition. In my opinion, no story of philosophers, artists, or intellectuals could have expressed it any better, though it might have expressed it as well.

I look forward to exploring more by John Gardner.

Gardner's masterpiece
Of all of Gardner's work, Nickel Mountain is his most lyrical (it is no accident he bills it as a pastoral novel) and least "talky".The narrative is quite clean and straightforward, though not without the wonderful use of language that is his hallmark, and it is Gardner at his least affected--while Grendel is generally considered his masterwork, or is at least what he is best known for, I believe that only Freddy's Book comes close to the happy marriage of skilled writing and unencumbered narrative in this work.

Unlikely love
This is beautifully written and very perceptive, a story of an unlikely love that grows over the years. Fat, gentle Henry Soames runs a roadside diner where young, brittle Callie comes to work.
This book celebrates the Catskill mountains and the growing relationship between the two, acknowledging the dark and celebrating the freshness and light. It's a book that stays in your mind.
The illustrations, fine etchings by Thomas O'Donohue, are a bonus.

Successfully evokes the vivid and continuous dream
Like some other reviewers, I purchased this book after having read Gardner's "Becoming a Novelist," and having read half of "The Art of Fiction."

I considered giving the book only a four star rating, as I felt like the plot was not what it could have been.However, Gardner did an excellent job at giving detailed descriptions, evoking the dream image in the mind of the reader.

I enjoyed being transported to a small community in the Catskills, where life was more personal, and decisions more powerful than they appear to me in this modern world of dissipation and aridity.

For those who have not read the book, you may not want to read after this point as I'll comment on the book's contents.

In a way the book seems overworked, as I think I may have missed some of the theme and symbolism it contains.As far as I can see, the "moral" message may have been contained in the character of Henry Soames contrasted with Willard Freund and to a lesser extent, George Loomis.

In my opinion, Loomis is in the middle-ground between Freund and Soames.The fact of the goat-lady's cart in his barn presented a problem for me, as I did not know what to think.I don't feel that my not knowing what happened lends itself to any purpose, or generates any emotional reaction in the reader (to me it seems like the reader is cheated).

The moral of the story is to be like Henry Soames; to be open and generous, even if agonizing over your worldview, and take up your cross.Compare this possibly with Abraham in Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling."

Freund, and to a lesser degree, Loomis, forfeit what is good and true and of value in life by their lack of interest in other human beings.(consider Freund's accident with the flower store owner and their conversation prior and Loomis and the goat lady).

Perhaps also the book raises the question as to whether these characters are self-made men by their free will and choices, or if they are predestined and resigned to their fates.

When I first picked up Gardner's "Becoming a Novelist," his tone put me off.I ended up picking it up about 6 years later and have come to appreciate his sensibilities.He seems to have been a concerned, intelligent and authentic soul, and I would have enjoyed being in a creative writing class taught by him.

Great inchoate love haunts this fine pastoral novel
In 1973 one of our nation's finest novelists, the late John Gardner, made high art out of obscure people living through trials of despair, betrayal and religious doubt in New York State's Catskill Mountains. Although Nickel Mountain slipped out of print, it's back live, thanks to New Directions' republication of such Gardner triumphs as October Light.

Nickel Mountain never received the acclaim of some of Gardner's other books, particularly Grendel, which remains in print, but it deserves to be back on the shelf. For in it Gardner has conjured majestic mystery out of seemingly ordinary rural people and landscapes.

It's 1954, and Henry Soames, 40-plus, overweight and suffering from a life-threatening heart condition, runs a diner where truckers and local farmers gather. Soon after 17-year-old Callie Wells starts working there, she becomes pregnant by Willard, a boy in whose love she had trusted. He zooms away to college, though, unreachable, leaving Callie in big trouble. She and Henry come to know and help each other; they agree to marry. Is there love? Of a sort.

Also much distress. Things Callie says in the throes of childbirth wound Henry. His heart is already damaged on more than one level: Great mountain of a man, he harbors inside a great inchoate love for people alongside a great rage at his inability to express it.

After Jimmy is born, the marriage is strained when Henry agrees to provide a home for a half-mad, Scripture-quoting Jehovah's Witness whose house has burned down, killing his wife. When the man comes under suspicion, a sense of nameless dread pervades the mountain like the fogs that descend through the trees at evening. Callie tells Henry she's scared.

" `Of what?' he said, exasperated.

" `How do I know?' she said. `I'm just scared, that's all. Really. Aren't you?' "

Henry realizes he is, because despite our boundless protectiveness for loved ones, in the end we can't protect them. His bitter, lonely friend George Loomis points this out, he who loses his arm in a grisly farm accident. The Jehovah's Witness is caught scaring Jimmy with tales of the Devil. Henry confronts him, with disastrous results.

Loss pervades this tale. People destroy each other, or themselves, without meaning to. A mysterious, itinerant Goat Lady driving a pink-and-purple cart comes on the scene, looking for her lost son, only to vanish. Terrible drought sets in. Henry sinks deeper into himself, ill-advisedly eating and gaining weight. Willard returns, not sure if he's looking for his lost son or not.

Redemption eventually raises its voice in the oppressive silences. By no means is it easily won, and it seems just out of the reach of articulation. Henry "had no words for his thoughts; the very separateness of words was contrary to what he seemed to know." But new life arises in the wilderness of the Catskills and the heart.

No cheap sentiment or smooth pieties in this novel. It shimmers with hints of Christmas and gardens and spirit without trying to direct us. "A Pastoral Novel" is the book's subtitle: pastoral in both rural and ministerial senses. We sense the urgent darkness of the soul. The final scene in a graveyard is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, suggesting that in John Gardner's brilliant vision, life and death are not what they may seem to be.
... Read more

Product Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. New Directions is excited to reissue the Gardner classics, beginning with October Light, a complex relationship rendered in a down-to-earth narrative.

October Light is one of John Gardner's masterworks. The penniless widow of a once-wealthy dentist, Sally Abbot now lives in the Vermont farmhouse of her older brother, 72-year-old James Page. Polar opposites in nearly every way, their clash of values turns a bitter corner when the exacting and resolute James takes a shotgun to his sister's color television set. After he locks Sally up in her room with the trashy "blockbuster" novel that has consumed her (and only apples to eat), the novel-within-the-novel becomes an echo chamber providing glimpses into the history of the family that spawned these bizarre, sad, and stubborn people. Gardner uses the turbulent siblings as a stepping-off point from which he expands upon the lives of their extended families, and the rural community that surrounds them. He also engages larger issues of how liberals and conservatives define themselves, and considers those moments when life transcends all their arguments. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

"The Old Woman Finds Trash to Her Liking; and a Chamberpot Set off a War"
There's a famous story about how Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner ended up writing "The Gilded Age": their wives dared them to write a novel of the sort they were used to reading, but of better quality, and the two writers took up the challenge. I was reminded of that anecdote when I read in Barry Silesky's biography that John Gardner often told friends that his wife Joan teased him at a party about writing a popular novel, "some kind of garbage-philosophy novel that will make a lot of money"; that very night he "hacked out the first chapter of something I called 'The Smugglers of Lost Souls' Rock.'" Although Joan later told people that the story of the novel's beginnings was entirely fanciful, it is true that the Gardners worked on "Smugglers" together (she is credited in the preface), and the result is the trashy pulp fiction that forms the center of "October Light"--which, it so happens, did indeed become Gardner's most popular novel at the time it was published (although "Grendel" has certainly surpassed it in the long term).

Gardner's self-effacing dismissal of the novel-within-the-novel's "garbage-philosophy" masks its subtle genius: what goes on with its characters--a bunch of anarchic drug runners who rebel against the authority of their captain--runs parallel to the lives of James Page and Sally Abbott, the elderly brother and sister at war in the main novel. Sick and tired of the television set, with its "monstrously obscene" game shows and "endless, simpering" soap operas produced by "panderers to lust," cranky James blows the idiot-box to smithereens with his shotgun and then chases Sally up to her bedroom, where he locks her in and where she finds the trashy novel somebody has left behind. Frustrated by its many missing pages, we read the novel along with Sally, who then refuses to come out of the room when mortified family members show up to negotiate a peace and even after James (sort of) relents. Living off the apples in the cellar (which will figure importantly in the plot's climax) and using a chamberpot to toss her slop out the window, Sally hides away from the rigid conservatism of her brother's world and escapes into the chaotic libertinism of a fictitious one.

Most obviously, Gardner builds the tensions of his novel by setting James's timeworn traditionalism against the modern freethinking and permissiveness that so intrigues Sally. (But even Sally has her limits: "that's the kind of thing this world's come to," she mutters when the dime novel's excesses finally transgress her own boundaries.) There is also, throughout, a thematic subtext on nationalism and patriotism; published in 1976 (when I first read it), Gardner meant this book to be his "bicentennial novel"; yet I read it again recently and, if anything, those themes have acquired additional force and relevance three decades later. Often overlooked, however, is the equally incisive examination of the tenaciousness of familial bonds, whether blood ties between brother and sister or the frail loyalties among a gang of drug-addled criminals.

In spite of the lectio interrupta necessitated by the fragmented inner novel,"October Light" is a deceptively easy and satisfying read, with an ending at once melancholic and heartwarming. And the book is morbidly, wickedly, relentlessly funny, both because of the over-the-top nastiness of the battle between James and Sally (not to mention the ineffective meddling of their family members and neighbors) and because of the campy wackiness of the adventures of the stoners who populate "Smugglers," along with the New Age truisms and pop-philosophies that infect their ridiculous conversations and the pot-enhanced "trial" of their ringleader. Beneath its satire and comedy, Gardner has some somber truths he wishes to convey to his reader, but if you take it all too seriously, you're surely missing the point.

My first (and last) reading of John Gardner.
It's been a while since I've read a book that I was so happy to finish because NOW I DON'T HAVE TO READ IT ANYMORE! Let me count the ways I disliked this book. Oh, wait, we don't have enough time.

Set in rural Vermont, the story centers on an elderly brother and sister who live in the same house. To be precise, it's James house and he's none-too-happy to have his opinionated, liberal sister living under his roof. Sally, the widow of a successful dentist, is now financially strapped, forced to live with her stubborn, conservative brother, a man whose dislike of television leads him to take his shotgun to her TV set.

Sibling tensions reach a crisis point when James chases Sally upstairs, brandishing a piece of firewood and threatening to kill her. She locks herself in her bedroom and refuses to come out, living off of apples stored in the attic while passing the time reading a trashy paperback novel. Unfortunately, their battle of wills lasts for over 400 pages.

October Light won the National Book Critics Circle Award and I gather it's a well-regarded piece of American literature but its brilliance was completely lost on me. I disliked just about everything in this book. The characters were either annoying or uninteresting, the story didn't pique my interest in the least, and the writing was nothing special. Worst of all, I detested the story-within-a-story device that only served to interrupt and draw-out the torture of reading this book. Obviously, it was supposed to have some relevance to the characters and their relationships in the main story, but I didn't see it. What's more, I didn't care and ended up skimming large sections.

By the time I finished October Light, I felt as if I'd spent a week cooped up with horrible relations whom I couldn't wait to flee.

Only On First Chapter, But....
Okay, so I'm only half-way through the first chapter right now, but I just have to pipe in because I find it very odd that the man who wrote the great "Art of Fiction" could have so dramatically contradicted his own thesis of storytelling as a "vivid and continuous dream": starting with the second sentence, Gardner immediately delves into exposition and flashback for the next twelve pages!

In this New Directions edition (with a very fine introduction by Tom Bissell; more on that later) Gardner constantly interrupts "the action" by these flashbacks.I didn't even realize the old man was talking to his grandson (or in front of him, more accurately, insofar as the young boy has no idea what's eating gramps) until twelve pages later -- the old man just reminiscences for paragraphs and pages, only occasionally checking back in to the present, and those memories span days and weeks and years.It's all very well-told, as far as the language is concerned: the similes are interesting, funny, and oftentimes philosophically profound; but I do wonder whether it's wise to start things this way.I mean, imagine if you're watching a movie ("vivid and continuous dream") and it starts off with some old guy sitting in a rocking chair for five seconds, and then the camera jumps to another scene, and then another, and yet another, and still another, and it's only half an hour later, after all those flashbacks, when you return to the opening scene of the old guy in his chair and you realize he's been muttering to himself in front of his grandson.While not a sin per se, it seems an awkward way of starting things.

The book opens in the immediate aftermath of James having chased his sister Sally up to her room and locking her in it.Then, apparently, he's settled in front of his fireplace, with his confused but quiet and rather obliging young grandson.But none of this was evident for me until about page twelve, so lost was I in the flashback exposition.Again, the narrative itself is well-told, but in terms of "strategy" I certainly wasn't in the "vivid and continuous" fictional dream Gardner advises in his manual on writing fiction.He is masterful enough in keeping me interested, but that damned flashback technique seems much too cheap.I had the same problem with this in his "Nickel Mountain," but his employment of it is especially bad here, right from the second sentence.

On the other hand, the narrative voice is rather like that of a yarn-spinner out of Mark Twain, almost, so it's charming and amusing and does much to alleviate my annoyance at having to piece together the action myself, as it were, from the few sentences scattered through twelve pages which concern the present situation, as opposed to its exposition.

Anyway, one last thing: the introduction by Tom Bissell was very interesting for me.It didn't just do some silly synopsis of the story (like Charles Johnson shockingly did in his introduction for "The Sunlight Dialogues," another Gardner re-issue from New Directions Publishing, which was mostly a summary of that novel!); no, Bissell actually delved into a bit of "Gardner criticism" ("criticism" in the sense of literary criticism) and even related "the Gardner mystique" to his own life -- something with which I too can identify, having once thought Gardner a god (but he's still a hero to me).I was particularly struck by Bissell's observation that Gardner is essentially "a young person's writer."I wish his introduction had been longer, since there were so many interesting points of Gardner's works and literary theories that were raised, not to mention a bit of "history" of that time in American letters.

Anyway, like Bissell, who's now "over" Gardner (though still very respectful of him), the more I read Gardner the more I also get over him, insofar as he does the annoying constant flashback thing that the cheap dime fiction he deplores also routinely employs.Quite distracting, for all Gardner's otherwise seductive talents.

BTW, New Directions will be issuing his "Nickel Mountain" this fall, and "Mickelsson's Ghosts" next fall.Depending on sales, "The Art of Living" may be next, in 2009.I wonder if New Directions will include the illustrations accompanying "Nickel Mountain" in their edition?(I wonder if there were any in the original "October Light," for that matter -- there aren't any in this edition.)Gardner was famous for insisting on illustrations with many of his works, and though the plates for "Nickel Mountain" didn't seem very interesting to me in an original hardback edition at the local library, I think they should still be included in another reprinting, in keeping with authorial intent.

Anyway, I'm very glad some of Gardner is back in print again!Thank you, New Directions.=)

She was the best I saw, and had the most sand.
Best novel I've read; and best novelist.

Heat and Light
On the surface, nothing much happens in October Light.Crusty Vermont farmer James Page chases his older sister upstairs and locks her in her bedroom.Subsisting on apples and the trashy novel she finds on her nightstand, Sally refuses to come out until their argument gets resolved.Ultimately, it does.Yet within these narrow confines, the novel encompasses the play of nature on the senses, the politics of change, and the ways in which memory, loss and guilt light up the synapses until they wink like fireflies on a soft June evening.

Sally and James are feuding over Sally's autonomy.She's moved into James' house because she's outlived her money and has nowhere to go.It's the mid seventies, and James has holed up in his tumbledown farmhouse to fight a rear guard action against trashy modernity and moral relativism.Sally's more progressive.She watches TV (until James blasts it to smithereens with his shotgun) and seriously believes that Democrats are people too.Sally won't be enslaved by James' rigidity and rages, and won't come down until he agrees to give her breathing room.

The book Sally reads in her room is called Smugglers of Lost Souls' Rock. This novel within a novel takes up about a quarter of October Light.It's a tale of marijuana smugglers off the coast of California; it's chock full of orgies, flying saucers and more barroom philosophizing about man's fate than any novel can bear.Fortunately some pages are missing, so we're spared some of the existential exegeses, but not enough.Gardner uses Sally's reaction to Smugglers of Lost Soul's Rock, to tackle what constitutes truth in a work of fiction; the faux novel also serves as a brilliant, hilarious send up of the seventies' version of truthiness.

October Light builds skillfully towards a quiet but satisfying resolution.We learn why James is so angry, and over time see that the struggle between brother and sister has widened to encompass a universal dilemma: which changes are worth embracing?Resisting?How can we tell the difference?When do we have no choice?James and Sally's struggle perfectly captures the cultural dilemmas of Americans in the mid-seventies.The novel also contains some beautifully written scenes, the best being an old farmer, now dying, talking about the way he experiences the changing of the seasons in Vermont.It's one of the most moving passages I've ever read in a novel.

John Gardner is underrated as a novelist.Part of this is self-inflicted, since he took potshots at many of his peers.Like a master carpenter, what Gardner builds is solid, elegant and clever in its joins.Sometimes curmudgeonly in his opinions, he nevertheless comes to his characters with an open heart.In his post World War II novelist cohort, only Saul Bellow ranks above him, mainly because Bellow was slicker about folding big ideas into the plots of his novels.If you like this book, treat yourself to Nickel Mountain, Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and his last, largely unread book, Mickelsson's Ghosts, which is a great American novel. ... Read more

Product Description
The critically acclaimed final masterwork of John Gardner: an American novel haunted with macabre and cerebral elements.The final novel by John Gardner, Mickelsson's Ghosts, originally published in 1982 just months before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a tour de force. The protagonist Peter Mickelsson, a former star philosophy professor at Brown, relocates to Binghamton University. On the verge of bankruptcy, separated from his wife, in questionable mental health, and drinking heavily, Mickelsson decides to buy a country house in northeastern Pennsylvania. What he encounters there are impassioned and shameless love affairs (one of which results in a regrettable pregnancy), a Mormon extremist cult, small town mythologies, the robbery of a robber, multiple murders, the ghosts of an incestuous family, Plato, and our hero's own possible insanity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

A Great Disappointment
I was greatly disappointed by this novel.It should carry the subtitle, The Misadventures of a Middle-Aged Lecher.It concerns the gradual disintegration of the life of a professor of ethics, Mickelsson, who has the morals of an alley cat.

Although much of the prose is fine, an equal amount is belabored and over-written.The explicit descriptions of sex are prurient.

There are so many "suspense hooks" thrown in that finally they seem contrived.A few examples:In a large stack of mail, Mickelsson particularly notices one letter with a hand-written, unfamiliar return address.He throws it down with the rest of the mail unopened.What's in the letter?Keep reading to find out.He writes checks without knowing whether he has enough money in the bank to cover them.Which check, if any, will bounce?Keep reading to find out.The seventeen-year old whore whom he frequents forgets to take a birth control pill.Will she get pregnant?Keep reading to find out.Multiply these examples.

I could make other criticisms.But to do so would be to commit a fault of proportionality:an extended critique would imply that this is a work to be reckoned with.It is not so.

This is a long novel.You have better things to do with your time.

John Gardner's best
This is not only John Gardner's best novel, but one of the best ever detective novels. Maybe saying that is giving away too much. I didn't even know it was a detective story until I'd made it a good 500 or so pages into it. This is a book that explores topical issues as well as centuries old philosophical debates. It's really a shame that the author died just as he was hitting his peak as a novelist.

Like a Crash Course in German Philosophy
Frequently quoting Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Martin Luther, the central character of this rambling, nearly-great novel is infuriating, and sometimes insufferable, but worth taking the time to get to know. I don't think the sheer physicalness of a character has ever been presented so convincintly in a modern novel.But, it is Mickelsson's detiorating mental state that takes over the book, and this element of the novel, at times, lacks consistency.It is as if Mickelsson can turn his crazy self on and off.

There are a series of mysterious deaths that puncutate the novel, and just when I was ready to give up on getting everything solved, it is all rather brilliantly put together.

This is an incredibly ambitious book, peopled with eccentric characters from both the small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania where Mickelsson resides and the SUNY campus in upstate New York where he teaches.There is a subplot involving a Mormon conspiracy.And ghosts.And did I mention German Philosphy?

Mickelsson's Ghosts: John Gardner's last novel
I've read most of John Gardner's novels, and Mickelsson's Ghosts is certainly my favorite, yet as with all other Gardner novels it's fraught with problems, particularly when it comes to Gardner's arrogance.For this was a man who was the self-proclaimed "greatest living author," who aimed to be remembered through the ages alongside literary giants like Proust and Chaucer, who razed and scolded his fellow authors without mercy.But now here we are twenty-six years after his unexpected death; John Gardner is forgotten, even unknown amongst what few true "readers" exist in this day and age; the majority of his novels have been out of print for decades, and when they ARE brought back into print the publishers must struggle to keep them so.Indeed, the authors Gardner railed against in his career-killing 1976 diatribe "On Moral Fiction" are the ones who are remembered today; I foresee Thomas Pynchon one day being considered alongside say Dante rather than Gardner.(Who knows, though: perhaps John Gardner could turn out to be the Herman Melville of the 20th Century, forgotten by his immediate generation, resurrected by the following.Maybe in thirty or forty years Mickelsson's Ghosts will be the Moby Dick of a new age.But I doubt it.)

Mickelsson's Ghosts has a simple set-up, with a metaphor any Serious Writer could dig into: a down-on-his-luck college professor buys a ramshackle house in the New York woods and sets about repairing it - the metaphor being, of course, that as he repairs the home he repairs his soul.Only Gardner jams a multitude of divergent threads, plots, characters, and digressions into this elephantine novel.Male witches who divine water holes in the thick woods, black trucks driven sans headlights in the dead of night, a houseful of redneck ghosts, true-blue undergrads who fret over mundane philosophical questions, rumored goings-on of puritanical Mormons afoot in the unwelcoming forest, the spirits of Martin Luther and Frederick Nietzsche, talk of UFOs and crop circles, radical photographers who keep the dying dream of the sixties alive, smarmy professors who sit around and endlessly discuss Big Issues.It's all here and more.And our guide through the dense bric-a-brac is Peter Mickelson, former college football star and current philosophy professor, gone to seed both physically and mentally - gone to seed, in fact, morally, spiritually, financially, and professionally.In his forties, freshly divorced, two adult children whom he no longer sees (one of them being the radical photographer, who's running from the government, it seems), his once-vaunted career in ruins.Author of a popular book on philosophy which at one point guaranteed him a long-standing career in the sun, but due to his own issues Mickelsson blew it, and now he withers away teaching introductory philosophy to undergrads at SUNY.This is our hero, a man who lives predominately in his memories, allowing his present troubles to accumulate and topple over like an overstuffed trash bin.In nearly thirty years of reading I've never come across as ineffectual a lead character as Peter Mickelsson, the first character who ever made me want to magically transport myself into the world of the novel so that I could punch him in his face.

We meet Mickelsson as he's buying the house which gradually (a few hundred pages in) he determines is haunted by ghosts.We know from the start that he's had a bad past few years.The first hundred pages of the novel promise a redemption for Mickelsson; he's bought this house, he's realized the mistakes he's made both professionally and emotionally, and he finds a new love with the fantastically-realized character Jessie Stark.A fellow professor, gorgeous, widowed at only thirty-five, Jessie is a living, breathing character whom Gardner created out of thin air (I pretty much fell in love with her myself); if ever one were to make a case that John Gardner WAS a literary giant, then his characters would be the first exhibit in the argument.Despite the long-winded digressions, the boorish philosophical discussions, the lack of forward momentum, despite all of those things which makes Gardner an acquired (yet still difficult) taste for the modern reader, his characters were nearly flesh and blood, three-dimensional, human beings with their own individual wants and needs and beliefs.This is particularly true of his main characters.Until brain-transplant science is perfected there will never be a better method of inhabiting another person's persona than through the novels of John Gardner.At any rate, Jessie basically throws herself at Mickelsson, and though he (and more importantly, WE) realizes that she is all he needs - she's gorgeous, smart, funny, and willing to help him navigate through the riotous mess he's made of his life - Mickelsson instead botches the promise and retreats into the insanity of his own mind.This is a book dense with inner turmoil, of thoughts growing from thoughts, of soliloquies delivered to the self, and we, the lucky readers, are there for it all.When action DOES arise it's over too quick, arising and culminating in a few pages - then fretted over for twice or three times the length.Or, worse yet, it's seemingly jammed into the narrative, an action sequence from an unrelated novel, as in the B-Movie denouement.

Only three relationships matter for Mickelsson as the novel proceeds: the one with the house, the one with Donnie (a local prostitute who falls in love with him), and the one with the ghosts.Gardner claimed in "On Becoming A Writer" (I think) that he enjoyed Stephen King's writing; King's influence is felt throughout the macabre sections in Mickelsson's haunted house.Many scenes are downright creepy, as Mickelsson, alone in his bedroom in the dead of night, hears voices chattering just outside his door.Yet Mickelsson, so ensnared in the ennui which consumes him in every other situation, just continues to lie there; even when the ghosts begin to actually appear to him (and touch him!), he remains as impassive as a Zen monk facing a loaded pistol.Only in Mickelsson's case the impassivity is not due to a studied indifference to life's passing troubles; it's due to his rapidly fading hold on sanity.And when Mickelsson recaptures his hold (to an extent) in the very final pages of the novel, the achievement comes so late that it doesn't harbor much of an emphatic thrill for the reader - instead, this wearying novel serves to leave you in your own ennui, glazed over at the wanton disregard Mickelsson harbors for everyone and everything outside of himself and his precious memories.

And the memories.Gardner was infamous for digressions, and Mickelsson's Ghost is mired with them, moreso than any other Gardner novel, even "Sunlight Dialogues."A case in point: halfway through the novel we have a scene where Mickelsson drives his newly-purchased (yet used and abused) Jeep to his morning classes.Along the way he reminisces (for several pages) about his one and only date with Jessie.Within this reminiscence Mickelsson recalls his troubled marriage - pages and pages about his wife Ellen and her early days at his side, followed by her disenchantment with life in the 1960s, followed by her rebirth as an "underground" chick, throwing performance pieces on the streets with her younger hippie friends, providing safe houses for poets on the run (Alan Ginsberg in a pseudonymous cameo).This in turn leads to a long essay on the sixties, on the movements and the dreams and the failures.From this back to the crushing and sad end of Mickelsson's marriage, and from there back to his date with Jessie; and from there, finally, back to Mickelsson in his jeep.About fifty pages have elapsed, and he's still in that Jeep; everything has occurred internally, forward movement of the plot has been nil.This is the case for most of the novel.

Death is close throughout.Thoughts of it, fears of it, acceptance of it.Mickelsson thinks about death constantly (what with ghosts hanging around, who could blame him?), and Gardner writes at length about the memories one hopes to leave behind when he or she is taken from this world.This morbidity is compounded by the irony that Gardner himself was dead within a year of the novel's publication, killed in a motorcycle wreck on a desolate country road.Mickelsson is a man at the end of his career, his salad days long past, any chance for a redemptive success crushed by his own bitterness and lashing tongue.It's not difficult to replace Mickelsson with Gardner; like his hero he had come to the end of his brief taste with fame, also due to his own actions.Gardner had been feted throughout the seventies, with critics praising his every release.The New York Times in particular graced him with positive reviews, even going so far as to proclaim him a "master."But then came "On Moral Fiction," where Gardner lambasted fellow writers for what he claimed was a lack of morality in their tales.The reaction was fast and harsh.Seek out critical reviews of Gardner's post-1976 novels and you will find a much different tone.The trophy horse had become the village mule.Also around this time nasty allegations arose concerning Gardner's nonfiction work, particularly his treatise on Chaucer, which it turns out had been plagiarized from other sources.All told, Gardner was now a man cast outside, a has-been.Much like Peter Mickelsson.And once you consider that Mickelsson's Ghost was received poorly both by critics and by readers (it barely sold its tiny first run), Gardner's death months later seems even more tragic...yet fated.

I've found that the reading of Gardner novels, for me at least, proceeds in the same fashion every time.The first several pages, as you get cozy with the blocks of prose and the relaxed pace, you realize you really are in the hands of a master, a man who not only knew how to teach writing but also knew how to write Literary Fiction With Lasting Merit, and you wonder, why doesn't anyone remember this guy?Then the rot sets in.As the pages progress and the digressions increase, the main plot vanishing in the horizon, you start flipping ahead a bit, checking if you'd miss anything important if you, say, maybe skipped a few pages.(But of course as a True Reader you ignore this impulse.)Halfway through you begin to hate this hoary-headed John Gardner, this man described by one hater as "a Hell's Angel grandmother," this man who, as one critic of Mickelsson's Ghost put it, "enjoys writing his novels more than we enjoy reading them."But you press on, and sometimes the end justifies the means.Mickelsson's Ghosts is a case where it does, "October Light," for example, is a case where it does not.As other reviewers have mentioned, Mickelsson's Ghost does indeed have a memorable ending, a bizarre one at that (which some Gardner-supporters have claimed turned original readers off from the novel, ruining their appreciation of it; something I find hard to believe, as it's my bet most of those original readers didn't even make it to the end).You'll be scratching your head over it for days, but it's my opinion (tiny spoiler alert), that one must look to the story of Mickelsson's grandfather, buried within the narrative, to understand what's happened to Mickelsson himself.

But make no mistake: this is a massive, enfolding novel which you can wrap yourself in like some tattered blanket.You can easily find yourself living within it, thinking of its characters as real people.You could easily find yourself moved by the genuine human pathos on each and every page.It all just depends on what kind of a reader you are, and what you demand from the fiction you read.If you don't mind a slow narrative, more internal action than external action, and pages and pages of speculation on the nature of death, then Mickelsson's Ghost will make for fine reading on a winter's night (though, despite the reviewer's claim below that this isn't "beach reading," I actually read Mickelsson's Ghost during a cruise in the Bahamas).

The critics, the readers and the ugly
So many readers minds are in concert regarding the reviews for this book and yet I found an original New York Times review from 1982 that was most unfavorable. It's instructive to keep in mind that there was a notable amount of unfair criticism targeted toward Mr. Gardner at the time this book came out, mainly because of `On Moral Fiction'. Bad mistake for Mr. Gardner.I can only imagine that he was looking forward to a spirited fight for the cause of higher art. Instead he found himself surrounded by resentful contemporaries with stinging tentacles. And so perhaps a critic or two approached this work with filtered glasses. Mickelsson's Ghosts is not only a `loose and baggy monster' like any good novel should be but is also a very visceral one that transcends the categorizations or genres it comes closest to.I don't think Gardner was working toward a mystery or a sci-fi or gothic necessarily and any solutions found here are not presented in a standard Mystery plot-driven format. etc. Most anyone that has approached this novel with a open mind (look at the customer's comments) knows its in a class of it's own. It succeeds at the highest level, pulling you in deep and leaving you in awe. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection, selected from more than 140 interviews Gardner granted, presents a wealth of information on the life and art of one of America's foremost novelists.

These interviews show him as a novelist, a charismatic teacher of creative writing, and a widely published scholar who has vast knowledge and who generated much literary information in his lectures and interviews.

After the publication of such popular and critical successes as Grendel (1971) and The Sunlight Dialogues (1972), this philosophical writer with an enviable talent for storytelling was regarded as "a major contemporary writer." After Gardner had demonstrated that he was one of America's most prolific, versatile, and imaginative authors, he became one of its most controversial when he attacked the literary establishment in his book On Moral Fiction and in his interviews.

These candid conversations reveal a man of contrasts and contradictions, a writer who, as one of his interviewers remarks, "brought to everything he did a passion that at times bordered on madness." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Always Interesting to Hear the Man in His Own Words, Impromtu
Unfortunately -- and this is not a fault of the book, but merely the way conversations are -- John Gardner is "less ordered" or "organized" here than in his writings on literary criticisms, since these are, after all, interviews, transcripts.(Actually, one or two or three pieces are articles based on interviews, which allow for the interviewers' reflections on the interviews.)

Very interesting, all the same, and, unlike prepared remarks, these conversations has Gardner in his own informal, everyday language.I don't think they helped me understand his works all that much better, necessarily, but I did get a better sense of the man and what he was like, and that helps, too, towards getting a handle on his works.Part of my continued fascination with Gardner, after all, is that he seems one of the few "philosophical writers" who talk about his works not in the language of a theorist but, mainly, in the language of a thinking reader, an intelligent reader.He discusses his works and the motivations behind them, but unfortunately of course it's all over the place; a "topical index" for his works would have been great (say, under "October Light" would be listed all the references to that title in this collection of interviews).As it is, it's a needle-in-haystack hunt if you're interested in some particular point or other: there's just no way of quickly researching anything here!

Still, a good book and a welcome addition to my library. ... Read more

Product Description
A first-time collection of the essays and reviews of the late artist and critic, presenting his views on Bellow, Nabokov, Updike, and others, explores subjects ranging from religion to fairy tales, and from King Arthur to Walt Disney.Amazon.com Review
Most literary criticism sends me into a coma, but John Gardnertalks about literature in a way that anyone who likes books can followand appreciate. Until his death in a 1982 motorcycle crash at age 49,Gardner suffered from neither a lack of productivity--he wrote morethan 20 books--nor for want of opinions about the literary productionsof others. In this collection of his essays and lectures, Gardnerprovides several upper-level English lit seminars' worth of commentaryon a number of books and authors--Melville, Roth, Oates, Styron,Calvino, Cheever, to name a few. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

NUTHIN' LIKE AN ELEGANT HATCHET JOB
I very much admire and enjoy everything John Gardner has written. What he says, how he says it is always informative and wonderful. His critiquing his fellow writers here is eloquent and as right-on as ever. (Shame he's dead, though).

Mostly, I can see his points, catty as some seem. I believe that arrogance earned, okay. Obnoxiousness can be fun, sometimes. Anything Mr. Gardner wrote I'd read. Herein he picks at well-known writers' styles and approaches, his comments are pretty subjective and often spectacularly blunt. He also applauds many, if not most. That he trashes some is really promotional talk.

He's entertaining, but his style and approach often get in the way of a more mediated, professional approach. If you're a writer/reader/literate person, intellectual invective with a smile. You're smirk and learn stuff cover to cover.

That said, I love Gardner dishing the dirt, kicking sand on his contemporaries. Yes, read this for its pertinence. But think its caustic jibes are a`la a gossip column more than a pedantic study. Enjoy his comment for what they are: entertaining truths, with equal measure on both adjective and noun.

. . . Of course, if you want to 'become' a writer, first read Gardner's
The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
... Read more

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Customer Reviews (10)

Meh...
I stopped at chapter 10, then skimmed/skipped around the book.

'Brokenclaw' has a confusing plot: James Bond is initially followed by a man, who is killed for no reason other than being in the back of a club, and Bond is blamed for the murder; he is then shipped off to a navel carrier where he is given his assignment to infiltrate Brokenclaw's courier system....whichalso involves a device called a LORDS and LORDS DAY....

The pacing is choppy and slow; characters are going from one place to another, and it's not entirely clear why they are doing so. (This mainly refers to Bond himself, as well as his companion 'Chi-chi'..

There is technobabble that even Tom Clancy would say 'What?' to...[that technobabble adds to the even confusing plot]. As the reader is already trying to keep up with the plot, he or she then has to keep up with unfamiliar terms...

With certain character(s) that show up, then disappear for the rest of the story (or at least until the very end)...i.e. an Chinese-American agent named Wanda who is sleeping with the main villain to pay her father's debt; she relates the story to M, Bond, and an American agent. She actually turns up later on in the story, but it is not stated why the government just stood by why she did her duty, which wasn't for the country, but for herself and her father.

On page. 161, the character 'Chi-chi' is a young Chinese-American agent uses the term 'splendid' in a conversation. Now, the story is set in the 1990s, and as aforementioned she is American, yet she speaks like an older white Englishwoman from the early 20th century...[I think Gardner does this with other young characters as well]. She is also not written as a very strong character; she makes a point to be treated like the males, and later on in the novel she is screaming and asking not be left alone when in danger, etc. Bond has to eventually save her from the main villian.

Furthermore, there is a big deal made about the Chinese intelligence and Brokenclaw's people using Caucasians to infiltrate Europe and the US. Now, as there are many agents who are of non-white background at this time in the US and Europe, the question is why are they--Chinese and Brokenclaw's people--focusing on and using only whites when not using Chinese? What is the significance? (Interestingly, there is a black man--who shows up very briefly--named Andrew who works for Brokenclaw as an equipment man).

This book didn't seem to have much quality control in terms of plot and characterization.

Super Reader
Bond vs halfbreed crim in torture test.

A villain has a bit of a plan going to cause some economic chaos on the stock market, and a naval officer daughter of a man who owes him money sees an opportunity for infiltration.

Bond and a Chinese partner follow up, to find a fancy house, torture, kidnapping and a showdown. This is too barebones for what is in it, really, and could probably do with being 50 pages longer.

Brokenclaw brings Bond to the 90's with a bang!!!
This one is good. VERY good! One of the best villians in a long time. Plot is a little twisted, but you don't notice two much. Final challenge is the best part of the book. Stunning!

Awsome! Best book EVER!
This is such a great book and i love it i baught it have reading it when i rented the book at the libary. Now i have read it 3 times and i am reading a 4 time write now. I never get sick of it! Broken Claw should be a movie! You have to read this book it is the BEST!

best bond book yet
maybe the best bond on print to date. wished they would make a movie of it. it keeps you clued to the page wondering whats going to happen next.. a must read... get if you can. ... Read more

Product Description
Sir John Betjeman was one of the twentieth century's great makers of the Christian imagination. He was may be the most significant literary figure of our time to declare his Christian faith and his terror of dying. Betjeman used his formidable gifts for poetry to show us how to think about the Anglican faith and about Englishness, and Christianity in general. Here is an anthology of about 75 poems on religious themes, with clarifying footnotes and a critical introduction that offers an overview of his life and poetry, as well as a commentary on some of his more difficult poems. The book is directed at three main audiences: poetry readers unfamiliar with Betjeman and his faith, readers interested in literature from a Christian perspective (C. S. Lewis or George Herbert) and, more narrowly, Christians who may be interested in discovering poetry that explores their faith. Betjeman's poetry has and continues to sell extremely well (Between two and three million copies of his Collected Poems). Here is a new perspective on Betjeman's life and beliefs.This new edition of Betjeman's religious poetry will demonstrate that Betjeman is the great poet of the Church in the twentieth century; it will also introduce delightful, accessible and important poetry to new readers who have not read much of his work. It will suggest to both British and American readers ways of thinking about spiritual, cultural and ecclesiastical matters as well as about the intersection of literature and art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent book--great poetry and great explication
I'm biased, as I had Dr. Gardner as a professor years ago before he was at Baylor, but I think this is one of the better poetry books I have read in awhile.The explanatory notes are very well done, the poems are organized well, and overall, it's a very strong book.I'm enjoying going through it.

An excellent anthology of Betjeman's religious verse
This book is an excellent introduction to the religious verse of John Betjeman and is presented in a very easy-to-read style. The book introduces each group of poems with background details and light commentary on the poems along with biographical information on the poet which helps to explain the content.

The themes in the anthology include death, spiritual doubts and fears, belief, vanity and hypocrisy in the church and the church in society and include many of his most well-known poems including "Slough" and "Diary of a Church Mouse."

This is an excellent book for those who want to study Betjeman's religious verse or who want to read the thoughts of one whose faith was often tested and unsure but who loved the Church of England as a vital part of England.
... Read more

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Customer Reviews (10)

Look beyond the title
It's a sad thing that anyone who has read and treasured Gardner's "On Fiction" should be put off by "On Moral Fiction" thinking it could be a lectionary of sorts.The book deals with the responsibility a writer takes on in being both honest with facts, true to details, and clever with words. This does not diminish when the author's work is fictional - there must be a seasoning of verisimilitude in every scene for a novel to function at all. We might excuse some light reading if the grammar isn't appropo, but heaven help us if we come across a period piece where a knight approaches a damsel and croons, "whassssup?"
Anyone who's published a novel soon learns it's not about glamor and gold. This book is a keeper - to read again and again - it reminds me of the higher sense of purpose in writing, the reason behind the process. Highly recommended.

Culture bad, Gardner good.
See, it's not just you. Others, too, have long believed much of the world's culture to be shoe-scrapingly disgusting, at best. In On Moral Fiction, Gardner explicates the rationale for your judgment. Gardner commands our respect for another reason: He openly heaped contempt upon the literary gods and other poseurs of his time. A man who truly lived. (Why couldn't I have had teachers like him while at university?)

John Gardner did us a service.
Serious musicians should listen to Beethoven. Serious thinkers should study Kant. Serious writers should read this book.

If creative writers read only this book and Aristotle's Poetics, the uneven morass that comprises most literature sections of even good bookstores would be cleared. If literary editors and agents read this book instead of trying to shallowly anticipate the market trends, the entire world would be better. Thank you, John Gardner, may you rest in peace, and please Random House, please do not stop publishing this book. And for everyone paying attention at home, buy it or order it from your local independent bookstore.

Obligatory Reading for All Novelists
Gardner defines the mission of the visionary novelist in a way that underlines the essential importance of storytellers to humanity's hopes and dreams--an approach as relevant in today's global village as it was when he first wrote it.

Mutual Exclusivity?
I enjoy Gardner's critical and educational writings even when I disagree, as with the idea of the indispensible "fictional dream." I'd like to point out, though, something other reviewers here seem to have either missed or mistaken for a contradiction. The avant garde and postmodernism seem to be placed, by these reviewers, at the opposite end of the scale from that which Gardner promotes. Meanwhile, Gardner clearly didn't believe that postmodernism and the avant garde were useless and irresponsible, as he himself wrote odd, postmodern novels while remaining within his own guidelines. He was also a vocal fan of much of Barthelme's work, as well as Beckett's. The avant garde is not the opposite pole from what Gardner intends, and he never suggested it was. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Place of the Skulls
I read this book several years ago and found it very memorable, Set after the Soviet Invasion of Britain, A spy is sent on a mission to activate deep cover agents placed there for just such an occurrence, lots of action, Ienjoyed it a great deal, ... Read more