Word: gardner
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...John Gardner...
...John Gardner did ride around on a motorcycle--in fact, he died when one he was riding crashed in 1982--and this mode of transportation may help explain why Gardner was never fully accepted by the academic and critical circles of his time. Some critics, citing Gardner's talent for characterizing the physical detail and philosophical outlook of Middle America, classed this medievalist-turned-author among the top American writers of the 20th century. Many others, however, found that beneath a flashy surface humour and topicality, Gardner's works lacked the depth of Ulysses or The Magic Mountain...
WITH THEIR recent reissue of--among other Gardner books--The Sunlight Dialogues, his lengthiest and best work, Vintage Books is helping to resolve that controversy. There was always the suspicion that because Gardner's books were set in the 1960's and reflected the turbulence of that period so well, they were somehow limited to that time. Yet even though we are now in the latter half of the the supposedly calm and reflective '80s, The Sunlight Dialogues, first published in 1972, is as fresh and pertinent as ever...
What makes this overt dichotomy interesting is the critical light Gardner casts upon our traditional concepts of law, order, justice, protest, and individual rights. Representing the law, Clumly suggests that the essence of the law-abiding citizen is a capacity to overlook the obvious injustices--let alone the small annoyances--of daily life...
These views, particularly the latter, are fascinating, but their proper place is an editorial. His opinions represent an attempt at cultural criticism rather than an assessment of this production. Andrew T. Gardner...