On Writers and Writing

On Writers and Writing brings together Gardners essays on literature for the first time. In piece after piece he explains how he separates novelistic wheat from chaff, genuine fiction from fakery. . All my life, John Gardner wrote weeks before his death in a motorcycle accident, Ive lived flat-out. As a motorcycle racer, chemist, writer I was never cautious. Gardners evaluations of his fellow writers are equally flat-out: often warm, occasionally shocking, always full of passion and insight. On Writers and Writing brings together Gardners essays on literature for the first time. In piece after piece he explains how he separates novelistic wheat from chaff, genuine fiction from fakery. A consummate teacher, Gardner examines contemporary writersBellow, Nabokov, Roth, Cheever, Woiwode, Oates, Updike, and other major authorswith the same critical but generous eye with which he graded his students writing assignments. In other essays Gardner examines influential storytelling that ranges from King Arthur to Walt Disney. Here we see the skill of some of Americas greatest writers laid bare by a fellow craftsman, making On Writers and Writing essential reading for anyone interested in American literature.