In this exceptional book, author John Gardner explores the literary form as a vehicle of vision, and creates heroes that personify his tremendous artistic ideals. A Boston schoolmaster abandons his dreams of owning a farmhouse in rural Illinois only to be
This classic guide, from the renowned novelist and professor, has helped transform generations of aspiring writers into masterful writers—and will continue to do so for many years to come. John Gardner was almost as famous as a teacher of creative w
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. Th
"All my life, " John Gardner wrote, weeks before his death in a motorcycle accident, "I've lived flat-out. As a motorcycle racer, chemist, writer...I was never cautious." This goes for John Gardner the critic as well, and that is nowhere more evident than
In The Sunlight Dialogues, John Gardner's vision of America in the turbulent 1960s embraces an unconventional cast of conventional citizens in the small rural town of Batavia, New York. Sheriff Fred Clumly is trying desperately to unravel mysteries surrou
"Combines the fascination of a fairy tale . . . with beautifully defined characters and an underlying seriousness of purpose that makes it something far more important. . . Freddy's Book is the work of a master storyteller."-Anne Tyler In a gloomy mansion
Refreshingly slim, beautifully written and deliciously elegant, Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer remains evergreen decades after it was first written. Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. I
