In the following excerpt, Morris recommends "Redemption" for its expression of Gardner's belief in the power of art to console, redeem, and transform.
This theme of art as redemptive force comes through most clearly and most intensely in the second story, "Redemption," which is Gardner's personal attempt to redefine a particularly painful part of his memory. The story is based on the tragic death of Gardner's younger brother Gilbert in a farming accident in the home-fields of Batavia, New York. Gardner talked of this memory in an interview in The Paris Review, and explained how the story served as a deliberate exorcism: "Before I wrote the story about the kid who runs over his younger brother . . . always, regularly, every day I used to have four or five flashes of that accident. I'd be.....
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