Stillness & Shadows

John Gardner

Sep. 2010 · Open Road Media

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Gardner’s relentlessly honest and moving portrayal of a broken marriage, and his ambitious unfinished masterpiece—a metafictional mystery centering around one man’s struggle to recover his lost identity—together in one accomplished volumeStillness:Martin and Joan Orrick—distant cousins who have known each other since early childhood—are in the final throes of a failing marriage. Martin is a compulsive drinker who obsesses about his writing, and Joan is struggling with a debilitating physical condition. Together they search for some type of collective identity, and identify where the dissolution of their love began. Inspired by therapy sessions Gardner experienced with his first wife, Stillness is an insightful portrait of one couple’s struggle for fulfillment in a tumultuous world. Private detective Gerald Craine is pursuing an unknown murderer. At the same time, he himself is the target of an unknown person’s pursuit. Stumbling through an alcohol-soaked haze, Craine desperately seeks meaning and understanding in a world fraught with fragmented narratives. Shadows:John Gardner’s friend Nicholas Delbanco has supplemented this unfinished novel with seven sections from Gardner’s original manuscript that provide critical insight into Gardner’s approach to developing the novel and its characters, giving a rare glimpse inside the creative process of one of the twentieth century’s most inventive writers. This ebook features a new illustrated biography of John Gardner, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Gardner family and the University of Rochester Archives.

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John Gardner (1933–1982) was born in Batavia, New York. His critically acclaimed novels include Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and October Light, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as works of nonfiction and criticism such as On Becoming a Novelist. He was also a professor of medieval literature and a pioneering creative writing teacher whose students included Raymond Carver and Charles Johnson.