A miraculously detailed account of the creative process. ‘Probably the biggest mistake I ever made,’ he says. Whether discussing the supposed value of writer's workshops, explaining the role of the novelist's agent and editor, or railing against the seductive fruits of literary elitism, On Becoming a Novelist is an indispensable, life-affirming handbook for anyone authentically called to the profession. Before becoming an author of fiction in the early 1960s John Gardner was variously a stage magician, a Royal Marine officer, a journalist and, for a short time, a priest in the Church of England. But no other vocation, he is quick to add, is so fraught with professional and spiritual difficulties. For a certain kind of person, Gardner writes, nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist. And they invariably believe theyre going to be rich.
With elegance, humor, and sophistication, Gardner describes the life of a working novelist warns what needs to be guarded against, both from within the writer and from without and predicts what the writer can reasonably expect and what, in general, he or she cannot. Some first novelists should write on stone so the words cant be changed. Description On Becoming a Novelist contains the wisdom accumulated during John Gardner's distinguished twenty-year career as a fiction writer and creative writing teacher.
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