Conversations with John Gardner

This collection selected from more than 140 interviews Gardner granted presents a wealth of information on the life and art of one of America’s foremost novelists.<P>These interviews show him as a novelist a charismatic teacher of creative writing and a widely published scholar who has vast knowledge and who generated much literary information in his lectures and interviews.<P>After the publication of such popular and critical successes as <i>Grendel</i> (1971) and <i>The Sunlight Dialogues</i> (1972) this philosophical writer with an enviable talent for storytelling was regarded as “a major contemporary writer.” After Gardner had demonstrated that he was one of America’s most prolific versatile and imaginative authors he became one of its most controversial when he attacked the literary establishment in his book <i>On Moral Fiction</i> and in his interviews.<P>These candid conversations reveal a man of contrasts and contradictions a writer who as one of his interviewers rema