This is the biography of John Champlin Gardner, Jr., an American writer, who was born in Batavia, New York. He was a teacher, lecturer, and prolific writer of fiction, children's books, poetry, radio plays, and scholarly medieval studies. He studied at Washington University in St. Louis, graduated in 1955, and Iowa State University where he received his M.A. in 1956; and Ph.D. in 1958, and taught creative writing and medieval literature at a number of American colleges. His novels include Resurrection (1966), The Wreckage of Agathon (1970), The Sunlight Dialogues (1972), Nickel Mountain (1973), October Light (1976), and Freddie's Book (1980). Among his volumes of short stories are The King's Indian (1974) and The Art of Living (1981).
             Frequently exploring philosophical questions, his novels sometimes came from literary sources. Gardner first gained notice with Grendel (1971), which recasts the story of Beowulf with the monster as the protagonist. In his controversial work of criticism, On Moral Fiction (1978), Gardner defends the importance of maintaining a high moral purpose in fiction and criticizes his contemporaries for indulging in cleverness at the expense of the traditional strengths of the novel.
             Gardner's mother was an English teacher, and his father was a farmer, lay preacher and opera lover. Mr. Gardner began writing stories as young as age eight. His younger brother Gilbert died on April 4, 1945, in a farming accident for which Gardner held himself responsible. It appears to influence him most deeply. Gilbert played the subject of Gardner's novel Redemption.
             After the death of his brother, the only way he could escape was to read a book or write a book. He would find himself lost in a book when reading, or when writing he would go into a fictional mindset and in that there was no pain. It was not until later that he finally coped with the pain of losing his brother, and finally forgave himself, which relea...