John Champlin Gardner, Jr., novelist, epic poet, and scholar, was born in Batavia, New York, on 21 July 1933 to John Champlin and Priscilla Jones Gardner. As a boy he lived in Batavia, attended the local schools, and worked on his father's farm. His...

A vastly prolific author of thirty-five books in a career spanning only twenty-five years, John Gardner penned novels, criticism, short stories, works for young readers, a biography of Chaucer, plays, and libretti. Best known for his novels Grendel,...

James Bond will soon be back, in bookstores. "Devil May Care," a novel written by British author Sebastian Faulks and authorized by the estate of the late Ian Fleming, is due to come out in 2008, the centennial of Fleming's birth.According to the Doubleday Broadway...

Authorities are speeding up their investigation of a state trooper who zapped a motorist with a Taser now that video of the traffic stop has been posted on YouTube, the Utah Highway Patrol said Wednesday.The video, taken from Trooper John Gardner's patrol car, shows him...

Dates in the life of Gerald Ford:July 14, 1913: Leslie Lynch King Jr. born, Omaha, Neb. After his parents divorce and his mother remarries, he is adopted by his stepfather and takes his name: Gerald R. Ford.1935: graduates from University of Michigan, where he had...

Ford Motor Co. is selling a controlling stake in Aston Martin, creator of exotic $100,000-plus sports cars made famous in James Bond movies. Aston Martin now will be run by a consortium of investors, including racing mogul David Richards, car collector John Sinders and the...

When one stands back to consider the shape of John Gardner's works as a whole, certain recurring "obsessive metaphors" or polysemous "figures" (in the terminology of Charles Mauron and the Russian Formalists) force themselves upon the imagination. One of the most resonant of these figures is the magician as artist or criminal. The figure involves the idea of a shaper—part magician, part storyteller—who purposely manipulates reality and therefore may either en...

In a recent essay, [John Gardner] deplores the "shoddy morality of much of our fiction" and insists that "instruction is art's most basic function, whether or not it ought to be." Hence, a great responsibility rests on the artist to "seek positive moral values, provide models of goodness." "Fiction," Gardner says, "should spellbind and inspire, though it should not lie." Unlike Flannery O'Connor who was trying mainly to conv...

It is the interesting fate of "Freddy's Book" to follow John Gardner's critical essay "On Moral Fiction" on the ever-longer shelf of his books. Interesting because the new novel is a very enjoyable one, an entertainment high and bright, in every sense; and yet it can't expect to escape the dead-earnest question, is it moral? Its very structure—a novel within a novel, or rather, a fairytale-historical novella with a long fictional preface explaining how...