On Writers and Writing

This compilation of essays and reviews, gathered posthumously from the New York Times Book Review and other publications, solidifies John Gardner’s legacy as a consummate teacher and controversial critic with a provocative sense of humor. Writing about his fellow craftsmen, John Gardner offers piercing insights into those whose works he admired and those whose works he didn’t. In exacting unapologetic evaluations upon such writers as Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, John Cheever, Larry Woiwode, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Updike, Gardner separates genuine fiction from fakery, careful not to spare his own writings in the process, and in doing so, he displays his influences and wide-reaching observations of the literary life.

Refreshingly unpredictable and self-aware, this collection lays bare the core qualities of lasting fiction and is essential reading for anyone interested in American literature.

Before his untimely death on the back of his Harley, novelist John Gardner was known as one of the premier teachers of the craft of writing. His books On Moral Fiction and The Art of Fiction are considered classics. On Writers and Writing collects a number of Gardner's essays and reviews, and his comments on such writers as Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, John Fowles, William Styron, Philip Roth, and Walker Percy are always insightful and frequently provocative. Gardner also writes about influences on his own writing, and his wide-ranging observations about literary life are enlivened by a rambunctious sense of humor.

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