This weekend I finished John Gardner: Literary Outlaw in the Las Vegas airport. I liked the book, mainly because it shed some light on Gardner's writing, which is revered by so many aspiring writers. If Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road, is a writer's writer, then John Gardner is a writing teacher's writing teacher.
However, I can't trust everything in the book. Barry Silesky wrote the first-ever biography of Gardner, the author who pretty much destroyed himself as a literary giant by attacking his contemporaries. I don't know if that explains Gardner's work is mostly out of print (except for a few books, including Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and On Moral Fiction) but I wouldn't doubt it. The man was a daemon; he wrote 33 something books in 49 years of life. Silesky does capture Gardner's ability to inspire and infuriate, as he promises he will on the dust jacket.
I feel that Silesky might be too close to John Gardner. He might admire this writer too much. Don't get me wrong: the implied author of Gardner, the ghost he grafted into all of his work, is a figure I admire. But the historical John Gardner loved to put on airs, inflate his own legend, and suffered from what seems to me a certain kind of co-dependency. Not to mention the way he treated the women in his life.
Silesky admits as much in the beginning of the book, though. He also is careful to include some (but not much) dissenting testimony from those who hated Gardner: John Barth, for example, and Joseph Heller. Silesky even relates how, at least once, Gardner called people and said, "Hi, it's John Gardner, the famous writer." Fame and fortune changed Gardner, and Silesky does not deny it.
Sometimes, though, I think the book is too forgiving of its hero. I love Gardner's work; but there are certain ways to act, some level of professional discourse, that is missing from his historical life. He was brash, and, dare I say it, a little fake. No one denies his genius. He led the charge against metafiction, which I admire; in a lot of ways, I believe his ideas were right. Just because you're right and a genius doesn't mean you don't have to play by the rules. Gardner was also unstable, more than a tiny bit crazy.
Immediately after I finished the book, I bought a paperback from the airport bookstore called 21: Bringing Down the House, a true story of how 6 MIT kids took Vegas for millions. In this book, I encountered, besides bad writing, the same problems: the story has been modified, certain parts ommitted and moved around, to make the whole thing seem more like the Ocean's 11 movie. A reader can tell, if he or she is a good reader, that the author Ben Mezrich isn't a good writer. Besides not being able to put a sentence together, he lacks verisimilitude, or the ability to make something sound true even if its not.
This is a reminder, then. Not everything you read is true. Always be mindful when you read something, whether it's the news or a novel, and be aware of the author's authority.
However, I can't trust everything in the book. Barry Silesky wrote the first-ever biography of Gardner, the author who pretty much destroyed himself as a literary giant by attacking his contemporaries. I don't know if that explains Gardner's work is mostly out of print (except for a few books, including Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and On Moral Fiction) but I wouldn't doubt it. The man was a daemon; he wrote 33 something books in 49 years of life. Silesky does capture Gardner's ability to inspire and infuriate, as he promises he will on the dust jacket.
I feel that Silesky might be too close to John Gardner. He might admire this writer too much. Don't get me wrong: the implied author of Gardner, the ghost he grafted into all of his work, is a figure I admire. But the historical John Gardner loved to put on airs, inflate his own legend, and suffered from what seems to me a certain kind of co-dependency. Not to mention the way he treated the women in his life.
Silesky admits as much in the beginning of the book, though. He also is careful to include some (but not much) dissenting testimony from those who hated Gardner: John Barth, for example, and Joseph Heller. Silesky even relates how, at least once, Gardner called people and said, "Hi, it's John Gardner, the famous writer." Fame and fortune changed Gardner, and Silesky does not deny it.
Sometimes, though, I think the book is too forgiving of its hero. I love Gardner's work; but there are certain ways to act, some level of professional discourse, that is missing from his historical life. He was brash, and, dare I say it, a little fake. No one denies his genius. He led the charge against metafiction, which I admire; in a lot of ways, I believe his ideas were right. Just because you're right and a genius doesn't mean you don't have to play by the rules. Gardner was also unstable, more than a tiny bit crazy.
Immediately after I finished the book, I bought a paperback from the airport bookstore called 21: Bringing Down the House, a true story of how 6 MIT kids took Vegas for millions. In this book, I encountered, besides bad writing, the same problems: the story has been modified, certain parts ommitted and moved around, to make the whole thing seem more like the Ocean's 11 movie. A reader can tell, if he or she is a good reader, that the author Ben Mezrich isn't a good writer. Besides not being able to put a sentence together, he lacks verisimilitude, or the ability to make something sound true even if its not.
This is a reminder, then. Not everything you read is true. Always be mindful when you read something, whether it's the news or a novel, and be aware of the author's authority.
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