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 mother was an English teacher and his father, a lay preacher, had read deeply in the Bible and Shakespeare; consequently their son was sensitive to language from the first. "Half-Welsh," he was also sensitive to music and grew up singing in various choirs. On excursions to nearby Rochester for concerts and opera he cultivated a taste for serious music, and on Saturdays his father gave him and the other hands the afternoon off to listen to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. Gardner still loves opera enough to insult people who say they do not, and among his many literary productions are libretti for two operas by Joe...