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October Light
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. New Directions is excited to reissue the Gardner classics, beginning with October Light , a complex relationship rendered in a down-to-earth narrative.
October Light is one of John Gardner's masterworks. The penniless widow of a once-wealthy dentist, Sally Abbot now lives in the Vermont farmhouse of her older brother, 72-year-old James Page. Polar opposites in nearly every way, their clash of values turns a bitter corner when the exacting and resolute James takes a shotgun to his sister's color television set. After he locks Sally up in her room with the trashy "blockbuster" novel that has consumed her (and only apples to eat), the novel-within-the-novel becomes an echo chamber providing glimpses into the history of the family that spawned these bizarre, sad, and stubborn people. Gardner uses the turbulent siblings as a stepping-off point from which he expands upon the lives of their extended families, and the rural community that surrounds them. He also engages larger issues of how liberals and conservatives define themselves, and considers those moments when life transcends all their arguments.
October Light is one of John Gardner's masterworks. The penniless widow of a once-wealthy dentist, Sally Abbot now lives in the Vermont farmhouse of her older brother, 72-year-old James Page. Polar opposites in nearly every way, their clash of values turns a bitter corner when the exacting and resolute James takes a shotgun to his sister's color television set. After he locks Sally up in her room with the trashy "blockbuster" novel that has consumed her (and only apples to eat), the novel-within-the-novel becomes an echo chamber providing glimpses into the history of the family that spawned these bizarre, sad, and stubborn people. Gardner uses the turbulent siblings as a stepping-off point from which he expands upon the lives of their extended families, and the rural community that surrounds them. He also engages larger issues of how liberals and conservatives define themselves, and considers those moments when life transcends all their arguments.
399 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 1976
About the author
John Gardner
379 books421 followersJohn Champlin Gardner was a well-known and controversial American novelist and university professor, best known for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth.
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
March 30, 2018
Wheels within wheels… Stories within stories… Now that the television has been shot down dead by her brother, the heroine has nothing to do but to read indignantly a trashy thriller in isolation…
Caught between inanity of the farcical pulp fiction and the foolishness of the obstinate as a couple of mules aged siblings, I felt as if I’ve been caught between a rock and a hard place so I couldn’t connect with the novel quite for a while. In fact I stayed unplugged almost throughout the entire text regardless of the good readability of October Light.
How often man is a master of his own troubles – the more wayward one becomes the deeper one sinks in bitterness.
They might be a little like characters in movies—a good deal in her paperback reminded her more of movies than of life, and perhaps that was why, as she’d known from the beginning, it was trash, really, or at least not the kind of book Horace would read—but there was something, even in a novel like this one, that was more like life than any movie could be. You saw things from inside. You understood exactly why everyone did everything—or imagined you did—so that when something went false it seemed not merely silly but—what? A kind of cheat, a broken confidence.
Caught between inanity of the farcical pulp fiction and the foolishness of the obstinate as a couple of mules aged siblings, I felt as if I’ve been caught between a rock and a hard place so I couldn’t connect with the novel quite for a while. In fact I stayed unplugged almost throughout the entire text regardless of the good readability of October Light.
A stupid man, perhaps, and a vile toad even among stupid men, but nevertheless, well read. He has discovered beyond any shadow of a doubt that all life is mechanics, that faith, hope, and charity are the desperate stratagems of people who would blind themselves to truth. All men, he has come to understand, are victims, objects in fact no more rational than planets; good men, he’s discovered by his books, are as much the victims of random concussions in the universe as are bad.
How often man is a master of his own troubles – the more wayward one becomes the deeper one sinks in bitterness.
April 11, 2011
Brother versus sister. James is in his '70s in the 1970s (have I ever shared my theory about guys who were hot in the '70s? The theory is that they are not hot any longer. D'oh! I'm trying to be a sane goodreader now). Sally has run out of money in her eighties (she'd be rich again in the '80s if she took the drug dealing tips from her trash novel)and is forced to move in with her miserly, life-hating brother. His hole forces her into her own hole inside his hole (er, house). Partly out of fear and anger, partly because she enjoys feeling put upon. It's back and forth between victim and victimizer. It's that cliche about women who hold onto every little thing until years later when they bring it back out to slap you in the face with how awful you are to them. James is just as bitchy of a woman as his sister. Both of them are mean little fuckers where it counts. The stewing is what makes them tick.
Old America versus new America? I don't think it was probably ever the old America that old man James Page holds festering in his angry heart (America with anyone but white people. No one wanted money and everyone worked hard. Ha!). It was something to get angry about. His bitterments work well as door closers against his family and countrymen. Sally is the kind of bigot that is okay with everyone else so long as she knows that she is still better than they are. This is what comes from talking to yourself too much.
There is more to James and Sally both in lives past than all of their versus mind games. BUT, the mind games sure get in the way of most everything else. Get ready for a lot of reading between the lines. And waaaaay too many commerical breaks (that would be the trash novel).
Mariel versus satire. I read on amazon that John Gardner's (the first one) wife dared Gardner to write one of those quasi philosophical 1970s novels like the wives of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner put them up to writing "good" versions of popular works they enjoyed reading (don't know how that worked out for them). Okay... Sally's trash novel became a chore to read. Too much! I really felt that way about all of October Light because the interuptions became the whole program for much of the book. I was relieved to finish it. It wasn't a slow burn or a quick burn of rivalry between the sibling's countries as much as it was a skipped record. I did appreciate how Sally and James would go back to certain thoughts- Sally's husband Horace possibly having a crush on James's wife Ariah; James's guilt about his son's suicide- as if they couldn't quite admit to things, and would attempt to justify the harder truths.
Truth versus the not whole truths.
I really liked this passage: "Whether or not he could have said what he was feeling, and whether or not it would have mattered to the world or the company that runs it, the old man was right about the meaning of that doll. It was there to undo him, both him and his ghosts. Whether it was true, as he imagined, that once in his childhood he'd heard angels sing, and had seen them moving in the aurora borealis, it was undoubtedly true that the Muzak made certain he would hear them- if in fact they were still up there singing- no more."
I felt the most then that James's resistance to television and mass consumerism could replace what was pure in his life. But then he despised the Snoopy doll held by his daughter's adopted son in his sleep... I remember more being a kid and making company out of toys of Snoopy and the like. He can take his indignation and stuff it. It isn't all about him.
Her heart churned and for an instant she remembered how everywhere she'd looked, just after her nephew had taken his own life, the world had seemed inert, like a half-fallen, long-abandoned barn on a still, cold day.
To them, it is all about them. The world stopped after the bad shit.
This is from Sally's trash book: "It was one of life's mortally discouraging facts that if a psychiatrist understood you, he could beat you."
Nooooo!
Why do I keep reading books like this? This is Of Human Bondage all over again! Sally: "Books have no effect at all, no value whatsoever."
It's like the Snoopy doll. It isn't the psychiatrist beating you. If one truth has to be the entire truth, one person has to be the fucking be all to everything... But that's wrong!
"Where have we gone wrong?" (According to this book that was Tolstoy's question.) Sally asks herself this often. Weeeell.... I don't know shit. I'm thinking the difference between being a TOTAL asshole, and only being as much of an asshole as you can't help being, is thinking one thing = the answer to everything else. Keep on dancing your little Snoopy dance, Snoopy. Lucy can try and puzzle it out from her advice stand, if she's lucky (if she's lucky from Schroeder's piano bench).
Sally's dead husband, Horace: "Yes, sir, it's the last frontier. You'd think we'd all get together and try to speak one language, wouldn't you? It would improve understanding, advance the cause of peace. Well, we never will," he'd said, shaking his head, still grinning that private, insufferable grin that wasn't mean to be understood.
Fuck psychiatrists pinning you down. Anyone pinning anyone down. Horace grew quieter, stopped speaking to Sally. Sally began not being able to speak enough, to anyone. James resented her talkity talk, as if she were trying to beat him verbally with what he beat her with literally (sticks and guns would break her bones and words also hurt). So Sally accepts that it is "natural to be watchful and suspicious". Books are the letting down the walls because they are not asking anything in return. OF COURSE they are good for something. Their whole problem was this pinning shit. My heart can't take this. Too much time in here. I need a vacation! And NOT with drug smugglers!
I'm going to rate this three stars because I was so very relieved to finish it. Have you ever had an uncomfortable conversation with a family member who drags up shit you don't want to relive? And you KNOW full well what they are saying but they go over and over again beating the same thing to death anyway? October Light is a whole lot of that. Yeah, they aren't my family. But I still felt that queasy feeling in my stomach. It's not that I'd like something less for making me feel bad (at least it hasn't stopped me in the past). The partial truths are too much truths? Too much philosophical stuff? Too much side taking in all of their heads. I feel like turning Horace and going quiet on Sally and James. I'm glad I was only alive for a little under three months of the 1970s.
P.s. October Light reminded me a lot of Sam Shepard's play True West. Two brothers fight it out about true life, true to life stories, changing 'scapes, dead family history. They pretty much try to kill each other.
P.s.s. I'll like this more when the relentlessness falls away to reveal the hideaway and restless truthy times.
Old America versus new America? I don't think it was probably ever the old America that old man James Page holds festering in his angry heart (America with anyone but white people. No one wanted money and everyone worked hard. Ha!). It was something to get angry about. His bitterments work well as door closers against his family and countrymen. Sally is the kind of bigot that is okay with everyone else so long as she knows that she is still better than they are. This is what comes from talking to yourself too much.
There is more to James and Sally both in lives past than all of their versus mind games. BUT, the mind games sure get in the way of most everything else. Get ready for a lot of reading between the lines. And waaaaay too many commerical breaks (that would be the trash novel).
Mariel versus satire. I read on amazon that John Gardner's (the first one) wife dared Gardner to write one of those quasi philosophical 1970s novels like the wives of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner put them up to writing "good" versions of popular works they enjoyed reading (don't know how that worked out for them). Okay... Sally's trash novel became a chore to read. Too much! I really felt that way about all of October Light because the interuptions became the whole program for much of the book. I was relieved to finish it. It wasn't a slow burn or a quick burn of rivalry between the sibling's countries as much as it was a skipped record. I did appreciate how Sally and James would go back to certain thoughts- Sally's husband Horace possibly having a crush on James's wife Ariah; James's guilt about his son's suicide- as if they couldn't quite admit to things, and would attempt to justify the harder truths.
Truth versus the not whole truths.
I really liked this passage: "Whether or not he could have said what he was feeling, and whether or not it would have mattered to the world or the company that runs it, the old man was right about the meaning of that doll. It was there to undo him, both him and his ghosts. Whether it was true, as he imagined, that once in his childhood he'd heard angels sing, and had seen them moving in the aurora borealis, it was undoubtedly true that the Muzak made certain he would hear them- if in fact they were still up there singing- no more."
I felt the most then that James's resistance to television and mass consumerism could replace what was pure in his life. But then he despised the Snoopy doll held by his daughter's adopted son in his sleep... I remember more being a kid and making company out of toys of Snoopy and the like. He can take his indignation and stuff it. It isn't all about him.
Her heart churned and for an instant she remembered how everywhere she'd looked, just after her nephew had taken his own life, the world had seemed inert, like a half-fallen, long-abandoned barn on a still, cold day.
To them, it is all about them. The world stopped after the bad shit.
This is from Sally's trash book: "It was one of life's mortally discouraging facts that if a psychiatrist understood you, he could beat you."
Nooooo!
Why do I keep reading books like this? This is Of Human Bondage all over again! Sally: "Books have no effect at all, no value whatsoever."
It's like the Snoopy doll. It isn't the psychiatrist beating you. If one truth has to be the entire truth, one person has to be the fucking be all to everything... But that's wrong!
"Where have we gone wrong?" (According to this book that was Tolstoy's question.) Sally asks herself this often. Weeeell.... I don't know shit. I'm thinking the difference between being a TOTAL asshole, and only being as much of an asshole as you can't help being, is thinking one thing = the answer to everything else. Keep on dancing your little Snoopy dance, Snoopy. Lucy can try and puzzle it out from her advice stand, if she's lucky (if she's lucky from Schroeder's piano bench).
Sally's dead husband, Horace: "Yes, sir, it's the last frontier. You'd think we'd all get together and try to speak one language, wouldn't you? It would improve understanding, advance the cause of peace. Well, we never will," he'd said, shaking his head, still grinning that private, insufferable grin that wasn't mean to be understood.
Fuck psychiatrists pinning you down. Anyone pinning anyone down. Horace grew quieter, stopped speaking to Sally. Sally began not being able to speak enough, to anyone. James resented her talkity talk, as if she were trying to beat him verbally with what he beat her with literally (sticks and guns would break her bones and words also hurt). So Sally accepts that it is "natural to be watchful and suspicious". Books are the letting down the walls because they are not asking anything in return. OF COURSE they are good for something. Their whole problem was this pinning shit. My heart can't take this. Too much time in here. I need a vacation! And NOT with drug smugglers!
I'm going to rate this three stars because I was so very relieved to finish it. Have you ever had an uncomfortable conversation with a family member who drags up shit you don't want to relive? And you KNOW full well what they are saying but they go over and over again beating the same thing to death anyway? October Light is a whole lot of that. Yeah, they aren't my family. But I still felt that queasy feeling in my stomach. It's not that I'd like something less for making me feel bad (at least it hasn't stopped me in the past). The partial truths are too much truths? Too much philosophical stuff? Too much side taking in all of their heads. I feel like turning Horace and going quiet on Sally and James. I'm glad I was only alive for a little under three months of the 1970s.
P.s. October Light reminded me a lot of Sam Shepard's play True West. Two brothers fight it out about true life, true to life stories, changing 'scapes, dead family history. They pretty much try to kill each other.
P.s.s. I'll like this more when the relentlessness falls away to reveal the hideaway and restless truthy times.
September 12, 2010
This book was absolutely painful to read. There is simply too much truth in in for me to take in at one time. I had to put it down for days at a time while i digested and processed my feelings. Alongside Sunlight Dialogues and Grendal it is one of the most amazing and affecting novels I have ever read. The metadrama is absolutley central to the story. It stands alone as fiction and gives us a searing look into the subconscious of the two protagonists. Gardner is a literary genius, so completely underated even by so-called Book People that I feel like an evangelist spreading the word. READ THESE BOOKS!
The only book that I have read recently that is of comparable quality is Ford's "The Sportswriter".
good reading
marc g
The only book that I have read recently that is of comparable quality is Ford's "The Sportswriter".
good reading
marc g
May 27, 2008
The opening scene justifies every book I've ever read.
June 13, 2018
I am trying to read through all the winners of the Pulitzer Prize. Despite their literary acclaim, some of these leave me less than wowed. October Light is a story within a story, one of which worked for me and one did not. James and Sally, elderly widowed siblings, have recently moved in together in their childhood farmhouse. An argument over lifestyles, in particular the presence of the television, results in Sally locked in her bedroom and James threatening her with a shotgun. The secondary story is a strange paperback novel which is missing pages about drug smugglers, flying saucers and sex which Sally reads while locked in her room. The story of James and Sally and its impact on the larger community, is well rendered. The enfolded paperback felt like a distraction that would never end. Googling commentary on this book, I learned that the family feud was a microcosm of the Revolutionary War and that the paperback novel and the tension over the television was an exploration of the connection between art and morality. Even knowing to look for these themes, I was unable to tease them out. Sally and James gets 4 stars. The smugglers and flying saucer gets 1 star.
Read
July 27, 2009From the start this is clearly the novel of a man actively striving after masterpieces. Each word is so perfectly chosen, it's unbelievable, and despite its length, the writing is so full of integrity that the reader can't possibly question or wonder if this could have been anything shorter than a 440 page book.
But it's a daunting read, like Paradise Lost was, and like most college classes are in the sense that the author assumes you are going to devote your whole being to participating in this novel, and have no other distracting obligations. I wonder if it's that I'm jealous as a writer or overwhelmed as a reader that made it so difficult to read this except in small bits.
And it's so worth it in the end. John Gardner is a champion of realism, and there are passages in the last 40 pages that are so full of love and wisdom that it can't not hit you hard. This is something I'll have to reread as I continue growing up.
But it's a daunting read, like Paradise Lost was, and like most college classes are in the sense that the author assumes you are going to devote your whole being to participating in this novel, and have no other distracting obligations. I wonder if it's that I'm jealous as a writer or overwhelmed as a reader that made it so difficult to read this except in small bits.
And it's so worth it in the end. John Gardner is a champion of realism, and there are passages in the last 40 pages that are so full of love and wisdom that it can't not hit you hard. This is something I'll have to reread as I continue growing up.
September 19, 2008
A re-read. great to have this book back in print.
Gardner is ridiculously under-appreciated.
Gardner is ridiculously under-appreciated.
June 10, 2020
I don't know why I endured this book for 237 pages before I quit. I guess I thought since it was written by John Gardner, it would get better. But it didn't.
January 26, 2022
Continuing my reading of the novels of John Gardner. October Light is unlike anything I remember reading. Sally and James are 2 obnoxious, cantankerous and stubborn people that I was drawn to them through every page. While the book meanders a little especially via the novel within a novel, it still shows the creative depth he’ll go to create interesting characters. Man, he’s really good.
March 15, 2011
As the novel opens, 72 year old James Page has just shot his sister's television. Sally Abbot, his penniless widowed sister, has returned home to the Vermont farmhouse in which she and James grew up. The two are polar opposites in nearly every way and beome engaged in a bitter battle of idealogy. James locks Sally in her bedroom, where she begins to read a trashy novel about drug smugglers, spaceships, and philosophy. This novel within the novel is a springboard to provide glimpses into the family events which created such stubborn and sad people. Through the siblings, Gardner brings into focus the rural community and extended family. The greater pciture is one of how liberals and conservatives view themselves and others, and the moments in life that transcend all pettiness.
Gardner is one of my 5 favorite authors. If you are familiar with his writing, you know his novel Grendel, the weakest of his books (I think). He was a professor of early English lit, so it is underswtandable that he wrote the book. He is at his best when he writes about the human condition.
Gardner is one of my 5 favorite authors. If you are familiar with his writing, you know his novel Grendel, the weakest of his books (I think). He was a professor of early English lit, so it is underswtandable that he wrote the book. He is at his best when he writes about the human condition.
January 27, 2019
Three in a half would be my ideal rating for this book. It had excellent insights into aging and family dysfunction. However, Wallace Stegner is still the gold standard for novels about cantankerous old white men. Gardner's prose is very good, but it just doesn't sing like Stegner's writing does. Definitely worth reading though.
Read
July 30, 2011Was absolutely struck by this novel in my youth, rereading it now I am struck again.
December 14, 2019
A very entertaining, well crafted novel. The main story is the conflict between a brother and sister. The sister, Sally, is 82 years old. Sally with no income and little savings has been forced to live with her brother. Sally had been a dentist and then ran a financially unsuccessful antique business. Her husband died about 20 years ago. She has no children. The brother, James, is 73. James inherited the dairy farm and house in Vermont from his father. James wife died many years ago and his two sons are also dead. His daughter Virginia is married to Lewis and they have an adopted boy called Richard.
James has had is own way for many years. With Sally moving in, James's way of life has been dramatically affected. Sally brings her television and James can't stand it being on. He is so frustrated by the television that he destroys it. He then locks Sally in her upstairs room. As the story evolves we learn about James and Sally's past. Sally, whilst locked in the room, is reading a 'trashy' novel and as the reader, we are also reading Sally's novel which follows a man who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, only to be rescued by drug smugglers.
I liked the author's writing style and the story of Sally and James. The characters of Sally and James are very well developed, giving the reader enough detail to be empathetic to both flawed characters. The minor characters are also memorable. I particularly liked Lewis, who seems a very relaxed, go-with-the-flow character, who at the end becomes mildly assertive is a good way! There are a lot of issues in this novel including forgiveness, relationships and memory, friendships and support, the country way of life, book reading, sociability and loneliness.
In 1976 this book won the National Book Critics Award. It is certainly a worthwhile read.
James has had is own way for many years. With Sally moving in, James's way of life has been dramatically affected. Sally brings her television and James can't stand it being on. He is so frustrated by the television that he destroys it. He then locks Sally in her upstairs room. As the story evolves we learn about James and Sally's past. Sally, whilst locked in the room, is reading a 'trashy' novel and as the reader, we are also reading Sally's novel which follows a man who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, only to be rescued by drug smugglers.
I liked the author's writing style and the story of Sally and James. The characters of Sally and James are very well developed, giving the reader enough detail to be empathetic to both flawed characters. The minor characters are also memorable. I particularly liked Lewis, who seems a very relaxed, go-with-the-flow character, who at the end becomes mildly assertive is a good way! There are a lot of issues in this novel including forgiveness, relationships and memory, friendships and support, the country way of life, book reading, sociability and loneliness.
In 1976 this book won the National Book Critics Award. It is certainly a worthwhile read.
May 28, 2019
This book might appear boring to some or redundant to others, all thanks to its story concerning old people in an age long gone. However, to understand why it matters so much to me, you have to consider the contrast. Imagine a teenager in his late teens who absolutely adores America despite never having been there picking up this book (an old Soviet-era translation of it into Russian, to be exact) and finding out that the often sad lives of ordinary Americans were and still are not so different from the lives of ordinary people here. It may seem not too much of an observation, but for me at the time it was equal to a little bit of my world being shattered into pieces. Ouch.
Besides, this book was a revelation for me in another aspect. I never thought that the story-within-a-story types of books work and I can simply say that this one does. Oh yes, and in the end, the main story simply clicks together, which gives you a bit of satisfaction despite all the bitterness.
Frankly, everything said above has little to do with the book and a lot to do with my personal experience. It is a book you will unlikely run into, and if you did, you might as well check it out.
Besides, this book was a revelation for me in another aspect. I never thought that the story-within-a-story types of books work and I can simply say that this one does. Oh yes, and in the end, the main story simply clicks together, which gives you a bit of satisfaction despite all the bitterness.
Frankly, everything said above has little to do with the book and a lot to do with my personal experience. It is a book you will unlikely run into, and if you did, you might as well check it out.
September 11, 2014
I first read Gardner's "Grendel" in high school soon after finishing Beowulf. It was a dark, grotesque, strange, enthralling book that still lingers and causes a mental spasm when I see the cover on my bookshelf. Years later I found Nickel Mountain with its cast of doomed but humane characters in the Catskills of NY. Now, I was able to pick up October Light. Once again, I am struck by his ability to depict flawed but compassionate people (in Vermont this time) while capturing a natural landscape of a change of seasons, staggering barns, decaying automobiles. Although I failed to grasp the story-within-the-story and some of the philosophical ramblings I was once again left with a real sense of place & person that makes his writing so lasting.
November 14, 2022
Of course, as a high school student in the 70s, I read John Gardner's Grendel. I remember checking out from the library all his books I could find--Freddy's Book, The Sunlight Dialogues, Nickel Mountain. On a Greyhound bus from Delaware to Key West, I absorbed The Art of Fiction. I had such a near-mystical experience reading his Mickelsson's Ghosts that I gave copies to friends hoping to share my elevated experience with them (you're all welcome). "The vivid, continuous dream" I repeat to my creative writing students until they're probably sick of hearing it. I'd been meaning to read this paperback copy of October Light (signed by the author!) for many Octobers now, and this year I finally rose to the occasion. Did anybody understand the Yankee mentality better than Gardner? Did anyone know better how to weave together the comic and the tragic into a compelling narrative thread? The only factor preventing me from giving this five stars is Gardner's peculiar inclusion of a book-within-a-book, a cheap, dime store novel one of the characters reads while imprisoned in her own home. It's an interesting read in and of itself, and, since it takes up at least a quarter of Gardner's novel, he must have had some artistic plan for including it, but the reasons behind that plan escaped me. Still, the "cold war" fought between the elderly, conservative "patriot" James and his even older "progressive" sister Sally serves as a reminder that the more things change--as if people's politics could change--the more, unfortunately, they remain the same.
October 17, 2021
This was a National Book Critics Award winner which is the reason I read it. (I've read all of the winners from the major literary awards such as Pulitzer, National Book Award, Booker and Pen/Faulkner award and am now working on some of the lesser known awards). It's a strange book to rate because it's a bad book embedded in a good book which is going to require a little explaining. The story is about a very unpleasant old widower and his widowed sister who is living with him. They get into a very heated argument and he angrily drives her up to her bedroom with a stick and locks her in it. She then stubbornly refuses to leave the room creating a ridiculous standoff in which neither refuses to budge and leads to friends and neighbors getting involved. This was what I referred to as the good story but, unfortunately, Gardner embedded a second story into it. This was done by having the sister find a trashy book in her bedroom and read it. So anyone reading this book is forced to also read this trashy book as well, and it was terrible. Gardner even had the sister throw the book onto the floor in disgust exclaiming "What kind of person would write such slop?". There must be a reason for this second story to be embedded in the book but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what it was because it seemed totally unnecessary.
May 7, 2023
Meticulously crafted, dense, and as complex and ambiguous as life. I confess I loved the "trashy" novel and Gardner may have missed a calling the pulps. There's plenty of genius under the tropes, veneer, and put on preachiness.
October 7, 2012
this book was a challenge. I will admit I certainly started skimming paragraphs along the way. the "book within the book" was interesting until it jumped the shark and I completely lost interest in its story whatsoever. it was a clever trick... although I didn't understand the point of the missing pages.. other than perhaps the author was just as sick of that tale as I was and this was a way to skip ahead.!
however the tale of James and sally is deeply personal. the insightfulness., stubborness, pain, loneliness, and regret are truly remarkable. I really cared about these characters. and that makes it a good book to me. so much understated and makes you realize how much you miss when you focus on getting your way. the characters were very unique in their perspectives and surprisingly you cover many of them before time with this book is over.
this is a rare book when I want to research the author and his intention with this book. I am clearly not academic enough to get all the satire or political commentary on my own ... but I can recognize the imprint.
this book will make me look at fall, Vermont, norman Rockwell, and Ethan Allen differently!
however the tale of James and sally is deeply personal. the insightfulness., stubborness, pain, loneliness, and regret are truly remarkable. I really cared about these characters. and that makes it a good book to me. so much understated and makes you realize how much you miss when you focus on getting your way. the characters were very unique in their perspectives and surprisingly you cover many of them before time with this book is over.
this is a rare book when I want to research the author and his intention with this book. I am clearly not academic enough to get all the satire or political commentary on my own ... but I can recognize the imprint.
this book will make me look at fall, Vermont, norman Rockwell, and Ethan Allen differently!
June 18, 2017
Another find from my friendly neighborhood Goodwill store... otherwise I would never have read it... and this is a Great American Novel. Reading this was like reading "The Reivers" or "The House of Seven Gables".
The part of the book that takes place in the present only covers a few days. An old man and his sister are quarreling. The sense of place (the country outside Bennington, Vermont) and the dialogue are perfect. Alongside the usual novelistic themes (the presence of the past, impossibility of understanding ourselves much less other people etc etc), Gardner adds many unusual touches. One of the characters reads a novel; the novel within the novel is a big part of the book. He adds an extended meditation on the act of watching television. As a kind of throwaway, he tosses off in 3 short pages just about the best depiction of the mind of a musician that I've ever read.
So - a book that is hard to describe, but very powerful and unique, well worth reading by everyone.
The part of the book that takes place in the present only covers a few days. An old man and his sister are quarreling. The sense of place (the country outside Bennington, Vermont) and the dialogue are perfect. Alongside the usual novelistic themes (the presence of the past, impossibility of understanding ourselves much less other people etc etc), Gardner adds many unusual touches. One of the characters reads a novel; the novel within the novel is a big part of the book. He adds an extended meditation on the act of watching television. As a kind of throwaway, he tosses off in 3 short pages just about the best depiction of the mind of a musician that I've ever read.
So - a book that is hard to describe, but very powerful and unique, well worth reading by everyone.
August 18, 2012
Usually I would rate a book I was unable to finish with 1 star but I am making an exception in this case. It is obviously a well written book with enough themes to keep a high school english class or intellectual book club busy arguing and analyzing for weeks. The two elderly, stubbborn, Vermont siblings represent exteme opposites in terms of political and social viewpoints and there are many supporting cast members to represent the range in between. Like most good stories - there is a dysfunctional family at the core of the story and this family has enough dysfunction to propel any plot. But ultimately, the plot and characters felt like just a device to present the various philosophical points of view he wanted to explore rather than the plot and characters being the core of the story. I only made it 50% through and just wasn't enjoying the journey and opted out.
August 26, 2009
I read this book so many years ago. I do not even barely remember it. I just remember I was obsessed with it and could not put it down. It has two stories throughout. A story within a story. That got in my way when I first started reading it. So I put it down. But, like so many books, I picked it up again and for some reason sailed right though it. It was gorgeously written. John Gardner was a phenomenal writer. I highly recommend this book. One of my absolute all-time favorites.
May 14, 2014
It may just be because I'm a Vermonter, but I loved every second of this book. I know those people; I know stubborn old farmers and stubborn old women that say jeezem'crow all the time. I was a fan of John Gardner before, but after reading this I was in the clouds in love with his writing. Such precision, imagery and insight into humanity!
November 8, 2020
Gardner was working on this novel when I took a class from him in 1976. I would walk into his office for a conference, and he would be typing out a sentence. He'd read three different versions of the sentence to me and ask me to decide which was best. Then we'd discuss the merits of each. It was a great learning experience for me. Not quite so sure how useful my advice was.
January 18, 2008
A breathtaking book that no one seems to read. Poignant, intelligent, funny and with one of the most beautiful endings ever put to print.
February 25, 2023
Sometimes you are so engrossed in a backlisted book it's pure delight to read about the author, the historical context, the region in which it's set, anything you can get hold of ..it's a bit like falling in love . A great book will stand alone or can reveal its geology, as you imagine it's writer, the audience and their times. A richer experience if you want it.
But some books, prize winners of the past, remain as opaque as mud and reading them is like wading through a chaotic and mind numbing swamp without a compass. The past really is another country .
I'm sure, from the little I've gleaned on line about John Gardner, that this author was highly respected and that this double allegorical tale spoke sharply to its audience as a critique of the 1976 Bicentennial in the USA.. hence the prize. And that he was a brilliantly idiosyncratic teacher of the writing art , still lauded today for his inspirational skills . I have a good friend who is also an inspirational English teacher who confesses that knowing the " rules of the craft " can be a roadblock to that flow of writing , an editor in the head before anything is really breathing in the page . Maybe that's it with this book . Who knows ?
We're presented, entertainingly enough at first with two elderly sibs, one a gnarly old Yankee Republican farmer who has taken in his older but homeless widowed sister with liberal, Democrat tendencies . They don t get along and their antipathy culminates in enmity and withdrawal. The main plot follows this impass for a few days pulling in a cast of family and friends into series of barely believable set pieces clogged with archetypes, no doubt representing aspects of a grand narrative ( biblical, political? ) that was unclear to me. We have a lots of apples, a suicide, sewage thrown out of the window ( environmental devastation?) a spendthrift, a shot gun positioned to fire if the bedroom door is opened ( cold war ?) a silent ineffective listener ( the pope, the UN ? ) , an emotional daughter ( news media ?) , an outsider ( Jesus?) . In the end I found myself second guessing every representation ( is the bar supposed to be hell, the Kerosene lamp flickering hope?) but I felt like I was trying to solve a crossword puzzle when what I wanted to do was loose my self in a story.
Woven inside this first story is another, the fragments of a pulp fiction paperback the sister finds and reads when held captive in the spare bedroom. In this it's all a ship of white American fools drug running then another ship of fools of people of colour drug running : sex, drugs, capitalism laid bare for all to see, the real America in the grip of the seven deadly sins
Trouble is I simply didn't care. Not one of the characters seemed real to me which was a disappointment. And the sexism and lazy racial stereotypes are hard to read now. I get what the author is doing, personifying political beliefs philosophical positions and who knows what else in these two stubborn elderly people and the ragged ensemble , but increasingly I felt the actions were slaves to this conceit. They weren't alive for me at all. Was this attempting to be funny, satirical or was it trying to hard to be the Great American Novel. I have no idea.
In the end, like many before me, I skimmed read it, at least the last hundred pages. Have to say my hardback, illustrated, deckle edge copy is beautiful. Just not worth reading.
But some books, prize winners of the past, remain as opaque as mud and reading them is like wading through a chaotic and mind numbing swamp without a compass. The past really is another country .
I'm sure, from the little I've gleaned on line about John Gardner, that this author was highly respected and that this double allegorical tale spoke sharply to its audience as a critique of the 1976 Bicentennial in the USA.. hence the prize. And that he was a brilliantly idiosyncratic teacher of the writing art , still lauded today for his inspirational skills . I have a good friend who is also an inspirational English teacher who confesses that knowing the " rules of the craft " can be a roadblock to that flow of writing , an editor in the head before anything is really breathing in the page . Maybe that's it with this book . Who knows ?
We're presented, entertainingly enough at first with two elderly sibs, one a gnarly old Yankee Republican farmer who has taken in his older but homeless widowed sister with liberal, Democrat tendencies . They don t get along and their antipathy culminates in enmity and withdrawal. The main plot follows this impass for a few days pulling in a cast of family and friends into series of barely believable set pieces clogged with archetypes, no doubt representing aspects of a grand narrative ( biblical, political? ) that was unclear to me. We have a lots of apples, a suicide, sewage thrown out of the window ( environmental devastation?) a spendthrift, a shot gun positioned to fire if the bedroom door is opened ( cold war ?) a silent ineffective listener ( the pope, the UN ? ) , an emotional daughter ( news media ?) , an outsider ( Jesus?) . In the end I found myself second guessing every representation ( is the bar supposed to be hell, the Kerosene lamp flickering hope?) but I felt like I was trying to solve a crossword puzzle when what I wanted to do was loose my self in a story.
Woven inside this first story is another, the fragments of a pulp fiction paperback the sister finds and reads when held captive in the spare bedroom. In this it's all a ship of white American fools drug running then another ship of fools of people of colour drug running : sex, drugs, capitalism laid bare for all to see, the real America in the grip of the seven deadly sins
Trouble is I simply didn't care. Not one of the characters seemed real to me which was a disappointment. And the sexism and lazy racial stereotypes are hard to read now. I get what the author is doing, personifying political beliefs philosophical positions and who knows what else in these two stubborn elderly people and the ragged ensemble , but increasingly I felt the actions were slaves to this conceit. They weren't alive for me at all. Was this attempting to be funny, satirical or was it trying to hard to be the Great American Novel. I have no idea.
In the end, like many before me, I skimmed read it, at least the last hundred pages. Have to say my hardback, illustrated, deckle edge copy is beautiful. Just not worth reading.
March 28, 2019
I have never ready any John Gardner, though his novel, Sunlight Dialogues, has been on my bookshelves for many years. This is a strange and fascinating work, divided really into two parts, the "true" novel takes places in granite Vermont and is about the desperate struggle between a sister and brother, octogenarian widow Sally Page Abbott, and her brother, James L. Page, a hard-bitten and hard-drinking, sometimes violent old farmer. Brother and sister have been living together for a while, and in a fit of rage, James destroys his sister's television set, and a few weeks later, chases her upstairs with a piece of firewood and locks her in a bedroom. The two will be caught in a fierce battle through the rest of the book. The second novel in the book is an old paperback Sally finds in her bedroom prison and ends up reading, called The Smugglers of Lost Souls' Rock, a weird tale about a would-be suicide, and all those he meets after his suicide attempt fails. While one could try and make connections between the true novel and the world of the paperback, I found the paperback - pages and pages of that story - got in the way of the true novel, which was far more intriguing - and eventually I found myself skipping all the pages of the paperback. For readers willing to dive into something completely unexpected. The opening pages of October Light are brilliant.
November 16, 2021
Another shining example of what fiction should be. This is about a elderly brother and sister in Vermont and centers around the struggles of everyday life in rural areas. However it also has a fiction within the fiction that works as a secondary plot— this one around what one would call ‘trashy fiction.’ This is a beautiful, funny, and equally haunting work that celebrates and speaks on the sadness and peculiarities of individuals in less then glorious circumstances. I have not read such a moving, truly emotional moving, novel in a long time. It is filled with characters colorfully of philosophical quips, jaded opinions and heart pulling reality’s. I cannot recommend this enough for someone serious about Literary Fiction. John Gardner is truly the finest writer of his era.
August 24, 2020
I read this novel when it first came out in 1976 for a graduate course, and it is the type of book that you never forget. I finally got around to rereading it, and am glad that I did. It is about two elderly siblings, James Page and his widowed sister, Sally Page Abbott. After James blows up her television in anger at his sister, chases her upstairs armed with a piece of firewood, and locks her in her bedroom, Sally begins a hunger strike, surviving only on apples from the attic and dumping her bedpan out the widow into the flower bed. Meanwhile, Sally finds a trashy novel with pages missing, and we read it along with her, a novel within a novel. It is a long book, but well worth it!
July 23, 2021
A delightfully offbeat novel, and a deeply compassionate one, as well. The main characters seemed very unsympathetic early on, and an unusual plot device made the core concerns of the book uncertain. I was tempted to move on to other reading perhaps halfway through, but given the book's reputation, and the great satisfaction I took from Grendel (by the same author), I soldiered onward, and happily so. As the narrative progressed, I watched as once unsympathetic characters rounded out into complex persons rich with many of the vices of human nature, but all of its virtues. It has been many years since I found a novel so moving.
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