Evoking the Dream: Class with John Gardner

If you know John Gardner, the author, you know he's dead. Therefore this class is being held posthumously.

A copy of Gardner's book, "On Becoming a Novelist" came into my hands about a year ago. I started reading it and threw it aside. "Well this is a lot of puffed up nonsense by some old guy. Not another one!"

But it was the only book about writing available to me, so I picked it up again. "Be positive. You can always learn a little something new."

Perhaps I'd changed, or the Universe changed, or even Gardner changed. As I started to read the second time, I was caught. Gardner was speaking to me, a "becoming novelist" in the matter-of-fact, take-it-or-leave-it manner of an experienced teacher. It was as though he knew his book would be thrown down, given away, found again, re-opened. And he was fine with that, because the person who re-opened his book, needed it right then.

This is what I read and re-read in Gardner's book: as readers, "We slip into a dream, forgetting the room we're sitting in, forgetting it's lunchtime or time to go to work. We recreate ... the vivid and continuous dream the writer worked out in his mind and captured in language so that other human beings, whenever they feel like it, may open his book and dream that dream again."

For the first time, the very first time, I began to view fiction writing from the point of view of the reader. Until my time with Gardner, my fiction was "given" to me like holy writ, and if the world liked it, well okay. But really, why continue to write? Why create fiction just for myself? Why go to all the trouble to write down bits of a dream? Why not just dream?

Because, like so many other dreamers, I really do want to share my dreams. And sharing, just as we learned in kindergarten, means considering others.

In the past months I've willingly embarked on a path of extreme growth. It all started with Gardner's darn book, and hopefully, will continue until I die. In order to share, to consider others, I'll use this modern tool: the blog.

Do you have a book, a moment, an author that suddenly deepened your thinking about something?