Interview met John Gardner

Auteur van De kunst van het schrijven

John Gardner overleed in 1982. In 1979 werd hij geïnterviewd door Joyce Renwick en Howard Smith van Gargoyle Magazine. Dit interview staat online.

Het begin van het interview gaat voornamelijk over de romans en de werkwijze van Gardner. Naar het einde toe gaat het echter steeds meer over Creative Writing en Gardner's positie in het Amerikaanse schrijfonderwijs.

So you do feel that you can teach a person to write?

Gardner: Yeah.

Interviewers: How do you do this?

Gardner: Well, my basic method is to first of all use exercises to develop skills that amateur writers, or beginning writers, don't know they need. An awful lot of writing involves tricks that are never mentioned in literature courses because literary critics look at writing from the other end, you know, what does it mean? Instead of, how is it created? So I use a lot of exercises. The other thing is I use a lot of analysis of what is fiction, what are you after? what's the fiction? and so on. And then of course people begin writing short stories and novels and I criticize them closely, and give them theoretical questions, and hopefully free them of any need to talk to me. They eventually internalize my information.

Het volledige interview is te lezen op http://www.gargoylemagazine.com/gargoyle/Issues/sc....

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