“I hope they’re interesting, I hope not more interesting than the fiction,” says John Gard­ner in his Afterword to these twelve essays that probe deeply into each of his major nov­els, his epic poem, his children’s stories, and his work as a librettist.
 
Contents include: “Et in Arcadia Ego: Gardner’s Early Novels” by David Cowart; “‘Into the Farther Darkness’: The Mani­chaean Pastoralism of John Gardner” by Samuel Coale; “A Babylonian in Batavia: Mesopotamian Literature and Lore in The Sunlight Dialogues” by Greg Morris; and “Grendel and Blake: The Contraries of Exis­tence” by Helen B. Ellis and Warren U. Ober.
 
“John Gardner’s Grendel” by Jerome Klin­kowitz; “Survival and Redemptive Vision in Jason and Medeia” by John Trimbur; “Sailing Through The King’s Indian with John Gardner and His Friends” by Donald J. Greiner; “Modern Moralities for Children: John Gardner’s Children’s Books” by Geraldine DeLuca and Roni Natov.
 
“John Gardner, Librettist: A Composer’s Notes” by Joseph Baber; “The Real Monster in Freddy’s Book” by Walter Cummins; “Magi­cal Prisons: Embedded Structures in the Work of John Gardner” by Kathryn Van­Spanckeren; and “New Fiction, Popular Fic­tion, and John Gardner’s Middle/Moral Way” by Robert A. Morace.