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Picture the poor, young, serious-fiction writer. He toils alone
at a pace not so different from that of Lincoln Tunnel traffic
at rush hour in New York. His spouse has a "real" job,
or perhaps he has a trust fund. His college friends are cashing
in on their dot-coms and wondering if he's ever going to join
the real world. He is not hell-bent on publication; he is trying
to write "serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that
readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind
of fiction likely to survive." He's likely to have no idea
whether he's succeeding. Nobody understands him.
Well, almost nobody. John Gardner understands him. Gardner's sympathetic
On
Becoming a Novelist is the novelist's ultimate comfort
food--better than macaroni and cheese, better than chocolate.
Gardner, a fiction writer himself (Grendel), knows in his bones
the desperate questioning of a writer who's not sure he's up to
the task. He recognizes the validation that comes with being published,
just as he believes that "for a true novel there is generally
no substitute for slow, slow baking." Gardner also has strong
feelings about what kinds of workshops help (and whom they help),
and what kinds hinder. But a full half of Gardner's book is devoted
to an exploration of the writer's nature. The storyteller's int
