On Becoming a Novelist

By: John Gardner

Narrated by: Anthony Haden Salerno

Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

On Becoming a Novelist contains the wisdom accumulated during John Gardner's distinguished twenty-year career as a fiction writer and creative writing teacher. With elegance, humor, and sophistication, Gardner describes the life of a working novelist; warns what needs to be guarded against, both from within the writer and from without; and predicts what the writer can reasonably expect and what, in general, he or she cannot. "For a certain kind of person," Gardner writes, "nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist." But no other vocation, he is quick to add, is so fraught with professional and spiritual difficulties. Whether discussing the supposed value of writer's workshops, explaining the role of the novelist's agent and editor, or railing against the seductive fruits of literary elitism, On Becoming a Novelist is an indispensable, life-affirming audiobook for anyone authentically called to the profession.

©1983 The Estate of John Gardner (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Great book, slightly irritating narration.

Actual text is excellent of course. Narrator had a very irritating voice, but admittedly did a competent job.

Entertaining Mixture Of Insight And Opinion

The thing that makes this book so much fun to listen to is also it's greatest flaw: John Gardner was a something of crank. I found myself cycling between thoughts of "Brilliant!" and "Oh, John..." He comes up with such gems as: "It's a law of the universe that eighty-seven percent of all people in all professions are incompetent." "Fools, maniacs, and jabberers are everywhere." and "One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors." Anthony Haden Salerno is pitch perfect in his reading; he gets Gardner's snarky, self-assured tone exactly right. I can't imagine how anyone else could have done it better.

The book itself isn't a writing manual so much as Gardner's thoughts on what makes a writer. What personalities are suited for it, what the aspiring writer will need, how the aspiring writer can get what he or she needs, etc.. Despite his tone and his probably outdated advice on writing classes and publishing, I feel he makes a lot of good points. I don't think that most people would object to the idea that deep art rarely comes from superficial people, or that going into the craft with certain motivations can lead to disappointment. Some of his ideas are strange, and his standards are quite high, but I thought the book overall had an encouraging message. If the reader is seriously inclined to writing, Gardner suggests they give it a shot. As he says: "More people fail at becoming successful businessmen, than fail at becoming artists."

Too intellectual for my pea brain

Would you try another book from John Gardner and/or Anthony Haden Salerno?

I'm sure there's gold in there somewhere, but after three hours of existential meanderings about 'the novelist' as if he were a unique species - a person who allegedly and oft-times turned out to be a people hating misogynists with bad cases of verbal diarrhea, or more unforgivably, word and language obsessed and thus non-connected with the human race and deemed incapable of grasping the essence of a character, blah, blah, blah.... YAWN. The book reads as a professorial diatribe - a slippery exploration of the meaning of becoming a novelist.The elitist intellectual snobbery and constant jabs at the inadequacy and wrongness of woman's writing (mentioned women's magazines, but the sub-text was a slap on romance - IMHO,) I couldn't take anymore. After three hours of this - I quit listening. Sorry Professor Gardner, I'm dropping your boring class.

What about Anthony Haden Salerno’s performance did you like?

Any additional comments?

Narrator: excellent.

Compelling

Gardner has a dry and engaging humor. Most writers will find at least some of his opinions offensive even while wholeheartedly agreeing with others.

I'm not certain why I find Gardener's books on writing so compelling even while being somewhat ambivalent toward his actual novels.

insightful and engaging

it is truly a pleasure to listen to John Gardner and his pieces his incorporation of humor while imbuing wisdom and knowledge on the young writer is truly a gift in and of itself.

Not great

My biggest problem with the book was Gardners hypocrisy. He speaks numerous times about how a person who does certain things is a snob, but constantly speaks poorly of commercial fiction (unless it was Bradbury or Heinlein).

He also descibed bees as "nasty". I cannot trust someone who hates bees.

This book may have been relevant when it was written, but currently it has little bearing on the publishing industry.

This title can be skipped.

John Gardner on Becoming John Gardner

What would have made On Becoming a Novelist better?

This book (like its author) is very much the product of one particular epoch in literary fiction. There may be some helpful information for the aspiring author in it, if she is equipped to stomach the author's narrow, sexist, and dated opinions on the nature of good fiction. None of its useful bits are so original, however, that a reader couldn't gather them from Stephen King or Sol Stein's much more palatable books on this subject. Die-hard Gardner fans will appreciate this book, but for anyone looking for advice on how to weather the literary climate of this century, I'd recommend picking something else.

What do you think your next listen will be?

The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World.

What about Anthony Haden Salerno’s performance did you like?

Anthony Haden Salerno made this a delightful hate-listen, as the subtle edge in his voice while he read the author's reductive and pretentious diatribes on True Writers Who Suffer and Why Most Fiction is Useless Tripe Written By Cowards made me wonder if the narrator shared my opinion that Gardner was totally that pompous college professor who tries to get into the pants of his clever female students by negging on their short stories.

What character would you cut from On Becoming a Novelist?

John Gardner.