Books read in 2024: No. 10 -- John Gardner: Literary Outlaw

by Barry Silesky

Started: Feb. 26

Finished: March 7

Notes: I've been reading a fair amount of works by John Gardner of late, and I admit to a fascination about the man, but it dawned on me I know little about the man other than a bare outline of his life. So, looking around for a biography, I found this one.

Mini review: This was a solid biography. Gardner is shown to be a complex character, tormented by the death of a brother, and always seeking to find some balance in his writing and his life between chaos and traditional values. In Gardner's case, as so often happens with artists, chaos seemed to win much of the time, at least in his life if not his writing. And one might argue that element of chaos even led to his early death. It was also nice to see a character who not only changed in their habits and opinions over time, but who showed little fret about having done so, which is something I've always understood because I feel human beings are almost always more complicated than to stifle themselves with the same thoughts, ideas, even actions, etc., all their lives. In other words, it doesn't surprise me when people change their attitudes and sometimes even their personalities. Was Gardner a great man? Ultimately, I would say not, though he obviously aspired to be and even yearned for it. But I believe within him there had existed the possibility, one which might have bloomed had he lived longer. Was he a great writer? Hmm, maybe. At the least, I would say he was a good literary writer, but I also believe he too often overlooked the simpler elements of our existence, at least within his writing, making things more complex than they needed to be. In other words, sometimes we do something simply because we want to, not because of some tragic past or deep thoughts, though that can happen, too. I'd also like to add that this book took me back to my college days as Gardner had also been a professor, one highly respected for teaching creative writing, and this brought me back decades ago to my own creative writing classes as a student, though I don't recall any of my professors being as thorough in reading student manuscripts as Gardner had been.