John Gardner: Remembering a passionate, controversial advocate for writers and fiction

In the 1970s, John Gardner was a star in the world of literary fiction, often mentioned in the same breath as Norman Mailer, John Updike, and Kurt Vonnegut. He won huge acclaim for his 1971 novel, Grendel, a post-modern retelling of the Beowulf legend. And in 1976, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for October Light, the story of two elderly Vermont siblings waging a war of wills inside their ramshackle home.

Gardner was also a leading force in the movement to establish creative writing in college curricula. For over 20 years, he taught writing at universities across the country, providing crucial early guidance to Raymond Carver, Charles Johnson, and many other notables. Gardner published early works by Joyce Carol Oates, William Gass, and others in MSS, the literary magazine he founded in the early 1960s and revived almost 20 years later. And his two books on craft and the writing life, The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist, are now considered classics.

But as quickly as Gardner’s star had risen, it began to fall. In 1978, he published “On Moral Fiction,” a literary manifesto in which he criticized many of the most famous writers of his generation. Decrying “tinny” and “commercial” fiction, Gardner called for writing that affirms life. A year earlier, Gardner also faced charges of plagiarism, over his book-length biography of Chaucer.

Born and raised in rural Batavia, New York, Gardner was the oldest of three children and his parents’ favorite; but his life changed forever on a fateful day in April 1945. Gardner, then 11, was driving a tractor pulling a cultipacker, a large device for flattening soil, with his 6-year-old brother, Gilbert, riding on back. The tractor stopped suddenly, but the cultipacker kept moving, and Gilbert was thrown beneath the steel rollers. Gardner was haunted by the tragic accident throughout his life, retelling the events in his powerful  short story “Redemption.”

In August 1982, Gardner was a lead instructor at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Middlebury, Vermont — an elite gathering where he had taught many times before. I interviewed Gardner in two sessions at the conference — conversations that would become his last interview. On September 14, 1982 — just four days before he was to be married for the third time — Gardner died in a still-mysterious motorcycle accident on a country road not far from his Pennsylvania home.

Sections of my conversations with Gardner appear in this tribute – enhanced but still sometimes difficult to hear – as well as new interviews with some of the people who knew Gardner best. In order of appearance, they are:

* Novelist and educator Ron Hansen, author of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and "Hitler’s Niece"

* Susan Thornton, Gardner’s fiancée when he died and author of the memoir "On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner"

* Joel Gardner, John’s son and creator of the documentary film about his father, "Sunlight Man"

* Carolyn Forche, award winning poet and memoirist, whose books include "The Country Between Us" and "What You Have Heard Is True"

* Liz Rosenberg, Gardner’s second wife and co-editor with him of the journal MSS … She has published over 35 books, including poetry collections, young adult fiction, and children’s picture books.

We have made every attempt to enhance the interview segments with Gardner, but you may need to turn up your volume to hear them