On Writers and Writing; Introduction by Charles Johnson / Edited by Stewart O'Nan

Reading, Massachusetts Menlo Park, California New York, etc.: Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1994. First Edition, First Printing. Cloth. Fine/Fine. Tall 8vo, white quarter buckram with bright scarlett lettering on spine over ivory boards, Mylar-protected lettered dust jacket (unclipped), xxi + [xxii] blank + 297 pages. EXCEPTIONAL CONDITION! John Gardner (1933 - 1982) was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view. A tour de force! Gardner's best-known novels include The Sunlight Dialogues, about a disaffected policeman asked to engage a madman fluent in classical mythology; Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf legend from the monster's point of view, with an existential subtext; and October Light, about an embittered brother and sister living and feuding with each other in rural Vermont (the novel includes an invented "trashy novel" the woman reads). This last book won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. Gardner was killed in a motorcycle accident about two miles from his home in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, September 14, 1982. The crash was four days before his planned marriage.--Wikipedia abridged.