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To humans, the heart has always been more than flesh and blood. Rising above its biological function, it has, instead, become the symbol of our emotions. Fear, sadness, anger, love, restlessness, discernment, foreboding, pleasure, longing, comfort, pride, despair - all that signifies passion and the human spirit are the domain of the heart. Gail Godwin takes us on a breathtaking journey that spans the entire history of human civilization, combining literature, myth, religion, philosophy, medicine, the fine arts, and intensely personal stories from the writer's own past to explore the full and complex character of this unique icon. Godwin's explorations and meditations brilliantly track themes of the heart in life, legend, and in art: from the first drawing of the 'heart-shaped' heart to the first valentine, from Gilgamesh to Confucius, from the heart of darkness to wearing one's heart on one's sleeve. ... Read more

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"Delightful. . .The drama unfolds with wonderful humor."
--The New York Times
"A MOST APPEALING BOOK. . . Godwin invites the reader into her mind, into the mysterious process through which fiction is created."
--The Washington Post Book World
As a novelist, Gail Godwin has claimed her rightful place in the pantheon of popular American literature. Her novels and short stories speak to women and men about their most intense relationships and heartfelt feelings.
In this collection of five short stories and a novella, Ms. Godwin is at her best. In the title novella, "Mr. Bedford," a young would-be writer spends time in England under the strange and watchful eye of a rather unusual elderly couple; in "Amanuensis," a charming college student cares for a famous but blocked novelist, with unpredictable results; and in "The Angry Year," a rebellious student is drawn to two different kinds of men until she discovers what she has been running to and from.
Witty, insightful, and a pleasure to read, Mr. Bedford and the Muses will turn every reader into a fan of Gail Godwin.
"IRRESISTIBLE."
--Los Angeles Times
"A SUBTLE WORK OF ALMOST CRYSTALLINE CLARITY. . . Godwin excels at portraying complex relationships."
--Newsweek
"Godwin, who has never been less than brilliant, is here passionate as well."
--Village Voice Literary Supplement
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"REAL ARTISTRY...A FINELY CRAFTED AND ABSORBING NOVEL."
--Los Angeles Times
Dane is an American magazine journalist, and John, a British psychotherapist. He says he knows everything about her, how she thinks, what she wants from life. Under the force of his certainty, Dane marries John and takes up the care of his silent three-year-old son, Robin.
They go on vacation to Majorca to try to become a family, but ten months into their marriage Dane finds herself growing more and more distant from John, impatient with his endless analysis of their relationship, and repulsed by his clumsy attempts at understanding. As ever, Robin's silence hangs constantly between them, a symbol of pure anger and hate. As the two weeks stretch on forever, Dane grows closer to a decision she can't quite make, and Robin sits silently in the middle, a reminder to her of all she cannot control....
"This is so skillfully in the classical tradition, and at the same time so accurate on the old Adam and Eve battle. I thought the British psychiatrist an only too convincing male monster."
--John Fowles
"A tense, tight, erotic book, complete with highly dramatic scenes, in an unembarrassed, uncluttered manner."
--The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Original in its situation, astute in its insight, and quite impeccably styled."
--Kirkus Reviews
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“True, time is the villain and we are trapped in him. True, love is sometimes not returned. True, friends are sometimes false. But to be aware of this—all of it—and still want to go on living, that is the triumph. It is the reward.”                 
 
As a young woman and aspiring author, Gail Godwin kept a detailed journal of her hopes and dreams, her love affairs, daily struggles, and small triumphs as she yearned for the day when she would finally become a published writer. At the urging of her friend Joyce Carol Oates, Godwin has distilled these early journals into two parts: This second and final volume opens in London in 1963 and concludes with the triumphant sale of Godwin’s first novel in 1969.

Newly divorced and filled with literary ambition, Godwin arrives in London in 1962. At the start of this second volume, the call to write has become ingrained in the trajectory of her life. Though she is hobbled by a tedious but well-paying job with the U.S. Travel Service (“I thought I should no more be doing this job than raising skunks”), Godwin’s journals brim with the emotional complexity and intellectual curiosity that will soon distinguish her novels, and a sharp wit that belies her twenty-six years.

Through these pages, Godwin’s development as a writer takes center stage, bolstered by her keen observations of human relationships—especially those between men and women: “I want to exploit, define, name, place this ever-shifting contest between men and women.” Her own love affairs are varied, doomed, and fascinating: There’s a short-lived engagement to a rugby player, a dalliance with a policeman, a tortured marriage to a psychiatrist obsessed with Scientology. “Men have let me down,” she writes, “and I construct my meaning in the emptiness they’ve left behind.”

Leaving London and all its passionate wonders and disappointments, Godwin arrives in Iowa City to study at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. There, taught by Kurt Vonnegut and José Donoso, building friendships with Jane Barnes, John Casey, David Plimpton, and John Irving, Gail Godwin finally achieves her dream—and a published novelist is born. The Making of a Writer, Volume 2 is a remarkable window into the life of one of the most notable American writers of a generation, and an extraordinarily candid look at the very heart of a woman who has written herself to acclaim. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Mississippi Quarterly, published by Mississippi State University on March 22, 1993. The length of the article is 7771 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Novelist Gail Godwin classifies her books as either major key, dealing with large issues that are eventually resolved, or minor key, more ambiguous and sinister. She finds that the jobs and past-times of characters are a good way to place them in a recognizable state of mind and establish their relationships with other characters. Godwin feels that her books have many women characters because she herself is a woman, but that this does not hinder men from relating to her work, just as she can relate to male characters in other writers' books. She recognizes that the South exists in many forms and attitudes, and that it is a state of mind more than a geographic region.

Citation Details
Title: A dialogue with Gail Godwin. (Interview)
Author: Lihong Xie
Publication: The Mississippi Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1993
Publisher: Mississippi State University
Volume: v46Issue: n2Page: p167(18)

Article Type: Interview

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Word count: 7444. ... Read more

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Chapters: John Lutz, Gail Godwin, J. X. Williams, Gustaf Sobin, Nancy Garden, Ann Rinaldi, Martha Grimes, Bruce Jay Friedman, Donald E. Mcquinn, Wilfrid Sheed, William W. Johnstone, Alexander Theroux, Leslie Epstein, Bette Bao Lord, Terry Kay, Gerald N. Lund, Joseph Girzone, Edna Buchanan, Darryl Ponicsan, Richard Lipez, Lily Tuck, Clarence Cooper, Jr., Dan Greenburg, Arturo Islas, John Casey, Carl Kosak, Rudy Wurlitzer, Jerome Charyn, Louis Uchitelle, Warren Murphy, Matt Braun, Joseph Mcelroy, Jack Bickham, Dorothy Uhnak, Robert James Waller, Leonard Gardner, Leon Forrest, Celeste Newbrough, Norman Rush, Aaron Elkins, Richard Sapir, Kay Nolte Smith, Chet Raymo, Nicholas Rinaldi, Jane Louise Curry, Anne Leaton, Robert Grudin, Barbara Daly, William Caunitz, Louise Munro Foley, Joan Brady, M. J. Engh, Richard Bradford, Douglas Terman, R. M. Koster, Alexandra Ripley, Charles Newman, Lawrence Thornton, Kristin Hunter, Gwen Davis, Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, Bruce Dobler, Ralph Compton, Carol L. Dennis, Elizabeth Nunez, Joseph Amiel, William E. Coles, Jr., Ronald Anthony Cross, Les Martin, Andrew Coburn, Geoffrey Wolff, Edmund P. Murray, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Ted Reynolds, Prudy Taylor Board, Susan Johnson, Ivy Ruckman, Jane Juska, Gloria Skurzynski, Ellen Schwamm. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 210. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: John Lutz (born 1939) is an American writer who mainly writes mystery novels. He has received an Edgar Award and the Shamus Award twice, and his novel Single White Female was the basis for the 1992 film starring Bridget Fonda. John Lutz also writes stories for jigsaw puzzles. ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=2509871 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

RELATIONSHIPS, RELIGION, AND REDEMPTION
Relationships, religion and redemption are the 3 R's in National Book Award nominee Gail Godwin's Evensong, an eloquently rendered, albeit sometimes decelerated, story of a woman's path to spiritual identity.
In this, her tenth novel, Ms. Godwin reintroduces us to Margaret, the daughter in Father Melancholy's Daughter (1991). We are reminded that Margaret was deserted at the age of six by her mother, and raised by her father, a too needy Episcopalian rector who suffered from bouts of depression and "lived by the grace of daily obligation."

Later, either responding to a call or displaying filial approbation, Margaret chooses to follow in her father's professional footsteps. When we meet her again she is attending General Theological Seminary, and has set her sights on Rev. Adrian Bonner, a balding, fortyish, self-denigrating cleric. Margaret is convinced that having each other will make more of them both.

Dropped off at a Catholic orphanage by his parents, Adrian also bears scars of rejection. As a 10-year-old, he sought approval by imitating the institution's director - the young Adrian fashioned a rudimentary flagellum with "strips of rubber from a piece of inner tube," and punished himself daily.

An unlikely candidate for conjugal bliss, a facsimile of Margaret's father? Indeed. It puzzles why Margaret, as astute as she is in the study of human nature, did not see this herself. Only later does she unearth "a flinty bedrock of self-hatred" beneath Adrian's chronic despair. Becoming temporarily impotent, he makes "bitter jokes about December graybeards who took to themselves May brides."

As the world stands ready for Y2K, the Bonners move to High Balsam, a small North Carolina community. Margaret is to be rector of All Saints High Balsam, and Adrian on the staff of a therapeutic high school.

A paradigm American community in economic straits, High Balsam is ripe for an onslaught by Grace Munger, a rabid and rotund evangelist who receives direct instructions from the Lord. Describing herself as a "freelance apostle," Grace says God has mandated a parade - a Millennium Birthday March for Jesus. When Margaret declines Grace's invitation to join her march, the evangelist digs in her booted heels and campaigns to change the young rector's mind.

Two surprising visitors add to the turmoil in Margaret's life. First, there is the appearance of Tony, a "scraggy old customer" who claims to be a monk from the Abbey of the Transfiguration. Margaret feels obligated to invite the 80-year-old to spend the night with them, a stay that becomes days and then weeks.

Tony, it turns out, is as adroit at duplicity as he is at rolling his own cigarettes. By making himself useful, he slowly insinuates himself into the couple's lives.

A second unexpected houseguest is Chase Zorn, a rebellious teenager who has been expelled from Adrian's school, a "volatile boy, seething with intelligence and mistrust, testing to the limit anyone who dared love him."

The addition of these two disparate personalities to a rather benign household proves to be an incendiary mix, both literally and figuratively, when Tony confesses that he is Adrian's father and a forgotten iron sets fire to Margaret's church.

One of the novel's most poignant scenes is found in Margaret's conversation with a young girl who disdains the Bible as a book that tells one how to be good. Margaret explains, "It's a record of people keeping track of their relationship with God over a long period of time.... People go through some pretty awful stages as they fumble toward what they're meant to be."

Moving toward what one is meant to be is at the heart of Ms. Godwin's well articulated tale. Whether defiantly questioning or unquestioningly faithful, Margaret's journey is much like everyman's journey. Evensong may help us along the way.

- Gail Cooke ... Read more