On Moral Fiction

New York: Basic Books, (1978).

Price: $1,250.00

Hardcover. Second printing. Tiny bump to one corner, else fine in near fine dustwrapper with very minor fading on the spine and a small crease on the front flap. Signed and warmly Inscribed by Gardner to Nicholas Delbanco: "To Nick - with love and thanks - among other things, for conversations which helped shape this book (all faults herein being mine, etc.) May God read your work with pleasure. John." The author's extremely controversial foray into moral and literary criticism.

Gardner and acclaimed novelist and critic Delbanco first forged a friendship when Delbanco hosted Gardner during a reading tour at Bennington College in 1974. Delbanco ended up hiring Gardner for the English Department at the College. They and their families began a close professional and personal relationship in which each of the authors strove to critique the other's works in private and promote them in public, Gardner touting Delbanco as "one of the country's best novelists." Each acknowledged the contribution of the other in developing both their theories of literature and for specific elements of their respective works, whether it be Delbanco using Gardner's title *Stillness* for one of his novels or Gardner using Delbanco's writing to help clarify the husband-wife relationship in one of his own works. Delbanco's home and family became a refuge for both Gardner and his first wife during their messy divorce. Following Gardner's death in a 1982 motorcycle accident, Delbanco became Gardner's literary executor; editing and contributing an introduction to Gardner's posthumously published *Stillness and Shadows*. Delbanco's daughter Francesca, who was an occasional babysitter of Gardner's children, and who has herself published two well-received novels was the Dedicatee of one of Gardner's acclaimed children's books, *The King of Hummingbirds*. A significant association copy of a fascinating and controversial title that, to some degree, resulted in Gardner being ostracized from the contemporary American literary scene.


Item #109356

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Item #109356 On Moral Fiction. John GARDNER.
On Moral Fiction
On Moral Fiction

John Gardner
birth name: John Champlin Gardner
born: 7/21/1933
died: 9/14/1982

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Biography

American novelist and poet whose philosophical fiction reveals his characters' inner conflicts. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore

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