John Gardner

     My mother’s first husband – although not exactly – was John Gardner. Yes, that John Gardner. The literary rebel of the late twentieth century, and the author of The Sunlight Dialogues, On Becoming a Novelist, and – the one everyone knows – Grendel. He was not exactly her first husband because he died on Wednesday, September 14, 1982. Their wedding date was September 17, 1982.

     In my ill-advised youth, I often imagined how different my life would have been had I been the daughter of the late, great, John Gardner, romanticizing it and imagining perfection. It probably would have been terrible. He had an artist’s temperament: he was often intoxicated, often unfaithful, and often abusive, both emotionally and physically. My mother had not been happy with him.

     My mother had met him at a conference for aspiring writers when she was a young, naïve thirty-year old woman. As you’ve probably gathered, my mother was drawn to his artistic temperament because it was something which she also cultivated in her own life; although she never met with nearly the level of success which he did. Due to this relationship, my mother has seen both sides of what being a writer is about: the constant struggle towards publication which she experienced, and the constant struggle for acceptance which he faced within the writer’s community after becoming successful. I still remember, and always will, her reaction to my announcement of a comparable path: She shook her head and covered her eyes. I’m still not sure whether she hid laughter or tears.