John Gardner

[Peter Giordano]

Cal said:
[A lot of stuff deleted]
>This last comment of John's shows how generous he could be, when so moved.
>To be fair, he often felt apologetic about ON MORAL FICTION; most of it
>was too off-the-hip and belligerent, he came to feel before he died, and
>he regretted a few of his ill-formed and harsher opinions, esp. of his
>contemporaries. Nonetheless, he did have some mighty strong opinions about
>good writing. I rate him as the best writing teacher I ever had, and the
>second best all-around teacher. Ray Carver's descriptions of what we often
>referred to as "Gardner's Way" (in the intro of On Becoming a Novelist,
>the damn finest book about wiritng hands down) is very accurate -- every
>Gardner student I know has some damn strong opinions about literature.
I say:
I have to concur with the above - I met Gardner only once and it was an
inspiring occassion -
I have spoken to several people who knew him or studied with him and the
description of his teaching skills and his generousity above doesn't do
justice to the profound effect he seemed to have on his students - As I
pointed out in a previous message 14 years after Gardner's death Jim
Shepard decided to dedicate BATTING AGAINST CASTRO to him, when I asked him
why Shepard said that he needed to acknowledge the debt he owed Gardner

Peter Giordano
Williams College
Williamstown, MA