Customer Reviews

The Art of Living and Other Stories

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John Gardner wrote a collection of stories about people and their relationship with Art: a story about a conductor, a painter, a musician, a young lady working in an Art studio, a boy in a house full of choir singers , a cook etc. The humanity explored in these stories is illumed by the practice or appreciation of whatever form of art they endeavour.

Gardner is an amazing technical writer, so the prose is incredibly clear and evocative, the plots are water-proof tight, and the messages are so deep and convincing that you don't mind that they leave with an ambiguous feeling. And what's interestingly unique about him, setting him aside from most of the writers I like, is that he doesn't write with a chip on his shoulder. He likes people. He is completely secure and can make penetrating observations without being condescending. The result is a frank and beautiful collection and eloquent stories that all come together to form a little piece of heaven.

I think Art is grown up work and should be taken with due seriousness. This isn't light fiction, but it's nice to be reminded that grown up, serious fiction can also be uplifting.

John Gardner wrote a collection of stories about people and their relationship with Art: a story about a conductor, a painter, a musician, a young lady working in an Art studio, a boy in a house full of choir singers , a cook etc. The humanity explored in these stories is illumed by the practice or appreciation of whatever form of art they endeavor.

Gardner is an amazing technical writer, so the prose is incredibly clear and evocative, the plots are water-proof tight, and the messages are so deep and convincing that you don't mind that they leave with an ambiguous feeling. And what's most unique about him, setting him aside from most of the writers I like, he doesn't write with a chip on his shoulder. He likes people. He is completely secure, and can make penetrating observations without being condescending. The result is a frank and beautiful collection and eloquent stories that all come together to form a little piece of heaven.

I don't like fluff. Puppies and babies are cute, but I think Art is grown up work and should be taken with due seriousness. This isn't light fiction, but it's nice to be reminded that grown up, serious fiction can also be uplifting.

Beautiful book.

Here you'll find some of Gardner's most moving short fiction, such as "Redemption," about that accident on the farm when Gardner accidentally killed his brother.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves one of our greatest writers and teachers.

Justin Nicholes
Fiction Editor, Our Stories

John Gardner is best known for his reinterpretation of the Beowulf myth with his novel Grendel. It was during the late 1970s and early 1980s that his name recognition and reputation were at a zenith. Then, he died in a motorcycle accident, and his lesser contemporaries buried him critically, because they were now free to do so. In his life he had buried the inferior writing of many of his contemporaries, and like the cowards they were, payback was a bitch to a man six feet under.

That said, while the stories in the collection are good, with a couple occasional lapses into greatness, Gardner was a writer that may have not had much more in him, expansively speaking. Yes, all the tales involve artists as supposed moments of epiphany, but I wonder how a better writer would have handled the lesser tales....Overall, latter day poseurs like the PC Elitists embodied by Jhumpa Lahiri or PoMo frauds like David Foster Wallace couldn't come close to the best these tales offer, and the worst in this book is still a notch above the best they are even capable of. Gardner's main problem, when he fails, is not too much fat, merely wandering off the given trajectory of the narrative. His prose is not muscular, but lean and occasionally evocative. He is taut and focused at his best. He can write of dilettantes without a dilettantish air, like Updike, yet also humanize them. He can also write of lowlifes and treat them fairly, without moralizing- he is fair, but firm. He follows Anton Chekhov's urging to write objectively.

Read him that way, too.