John Gardner and the Fictive Dream

The Art of Fiction (Excerpt)
by John Gardner

In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols.

The dream is as alive and compelling as one’s dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he’s written and find the dream starting up again.

This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer’s process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things—sees them clearly—and in the act of wondering what they will do next he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid…

The Art of Fiction is available at Amazon.com

Shoes to Fill, or Don’t Make Me Laugh, poem by Gerald Locklin

SHOES TO FILL, OR DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH
Poem by Gerald Locklin

I saw today, in Coda: The Poets’ and Writers’ Newsletter,
A highly amusing item:

The State University of New York at Binghamton
Is advertising to fill the Chair
Formerly held by John Gardner.

Among the qualifications is that the candidate
Possess “similar achievements” to Gardner’s.

Maybe they haven’t heard in Binghamton
That Hemingway, Faulkner and Edmund Wilson
Are all also dead.

Photo: John Gardner (1933-1982), novelist, essayist, literary critic, university professor. Winner of the 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel October Light, Gardner was also the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Sunlight Dialogues and Grendel. After Gardner died in a motorcycle accident in 1982 at age 49, Harpur College of Binghampton University issued a classified ad for his replacement — as Gerald Locklin describes in his poem “Shoes to Fill, or Don’t Make Me Laugh.”

John Gardner and Persistence

“…the true novelist is the one who doesn’t quit. Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or ‘way,’ an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious — a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand — and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.” JOHN GARDNER, On Becoming a Novelist

Find On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner at Amazon.com.

John Gardner Discusses the Writer’s Trance (Fictive Dream)

“In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols.

The dream is as alive and compelling as one’s dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he’s written and find the dream starting up again.

This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer’s process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things—sees them clearly—and in the act of wondering what they will do next he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid…” 

JOHN GARDNER, The Art of Fiction, available at Amazon.com

Shoes to FIll, or Don’t Make Me Laugh — Poem by Gerald Locklin

SHOES TO FILL, OR DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH

Poem by Gerald Locklin

I saw today, in Coda: The Poets’ and Writers’ Newsletter,
A highly amusing item:

The State University of New York at Binghamton
Is advertising to fill the Chair
Formerly held by John Gardner.

Among the qualifications is that the candidate
Possess “similar achievements” to Gardner’s.

Maybe they haven’t heard in Binghamton
That Hemingway, Faulkner and Edmund Wilson
Are all also dead.

Photo: John Gardner (1933-1982), novelist, essayist, literary critic, university professor. Winner of the 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel October Light, Gardner was also the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Sunlight Dialogues and Grendel. After Gardner died in a motorcycle accident in 1982 at age 49, Harpur College of Binghampton University issued a classified ad for his replacement — as Gerald Locklin describes in his poem “Shoes to Fill, or Don’t Make Me Laugh.”

On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner

Final paragraph of On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner….

“…the true novelist is the one who doesn’t quit. Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or “way,” an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious — a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand — and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.” 

Find On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner at Amazon.com.