A review by thebeardedpoet
On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner

4.0

Gardner seems sincere here in his goal to explain what it takes to become a novelist who is also an artist. If you come to this book as an aspiring writer of entertainment, you will take quite a few lumps. For instance, Gardner says most science fiction is junk. He is after the artistic novel, written with challenging literary sentences and delving deep into characters who seem more real than life. He also doesn't pull any punches about how difficult, challenging, and nearly impossible it is to become such a novelist. He dishes it up straight, and some young novelists may despair reading his observations and advice. Yet all in all, I think he genuinely lays out the work and techniques necessary to master novel writing with the hope that his experience will benefit the next generation.