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 the subsequent narrative fell into the editor's hands—suggests the kind of literary game-playing against which the Gardner of "On Moral Fiction" has so much to say: it is a structure worthy of that "unmoral" novelist John Barth. "On Moral Fiction" itself is very enjoyable too—meaning brightly readable, which critical essays generally aren't. But underneath it is a sermon as solemn as the little word "on" in its title, shot through with that dread of pleasure we associate with early Protestantism. It leads one to inspect all the pleasure Gardner himself has given—he gave most in "Grendel," and he's giving it again now—in order to find those improvements that were secretly worked upon the reader as he sat there, unsuspecting, and more or less enthralled.
Most of the enthralling in "Freddy's Book" is done in the long fictional preface….
This is a free excerpt of 211 words. There are 1,338 words (approx.
4 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Gardner, John 1933–: Critical Essay by John Romano Access Pass.
