The Twenty - Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous
Number 6
John Champlin Gardner, Jr.
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John Gardner from the 1951 Batavia High School Yearbook |
John Champlin Gardner, Jr. was born in Batavia on July 21, 1933. He was the first of four children born to John Gardner, Sr. and Priscilla Jones Gardner. The elder Gardner was a dairy farmer and lay preacher and Mrs. Gardner was an English teacher in the local schools.
Tragedy rocked the Gardner household in 1945. John’s younger brother, Gilbert, was killed when he was run over by a cultipacker that Gardner was pulling with a tractor. John blamed himself and the event haunted him the rest of his life.
Gardner's Teaching Assignments |
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| 1958 - 1959 | Oberlin College |
| 1959 - 1962 | Chico State University |
| 1962 - 1965 | San Francisco State University |
| 1965 - 1974 | Southern Illinois University |
| 1970 | Visiting Professor at University of Detroit |
| 1973 | Visiting Professor at Northwestern University |
| 1974 - 1975 | Bennington College |
| 1976 - 1982 | SUNY - Binghamton |
As a young adult, John Gardner had many interests. He wrote plays, studied chemistry, played the French horn and was an Eagle Scout. While at Alexander High School, he drew a cartoon of an elephant in art class that was published in the July 1948 edition of Seventeen Magazine. For his senior year of high school, he transferred to the larger Batavia High School so he could take some more challenging classes. Every Saturday, he went to Rochester where he took French horn lessons at the Eastman School of Music’s Preparatory School.
Following his graduation from Batavia High School in 1951, Gardner had to decide where he was going to study. He was awarded a scholarship to the Eastman School, but he chose to go to DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and major in chemistry.
His interest in literature took off at DePauw. He wrote a story that was published in the college magazine and the book and lyrics for a musical comedy called the “1954 Monon Revue.” Before the play’s production, Gardner transferred to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His transfer was prompted by his marriage on June 6, 1953 to Joan Patterson. Patterson, a native of St. Louis, was Gardner’s second cousin on his mother’s side. The two had known each other since they were young children.
Gardner earned his bachelor’s degree in 1955 and was accepted into the graduate program at the University of Iowa. He earned his Ph.D. three years later and accepted his first teaching position at Oberlin College. At Oberlin, he was described as a popular teacher, a description that followed him throughout his career. After a year at Oberlin, he moved out west for a teaching position at Chico State University in California.
As a college professor, Gardner taught at a number of colleges (see sidebar.) In 1965, he began his appointment as associate professor of Anglo - Saxon and Medieval Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Gardner stayed at Southern Illinois longer than any other position.
Being a tenured professor at Southern Illinois allowed him to write and apply for fellowships and guest teaching posts at other institutions. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1973 – 1974 that allowed him to continue his advanced study of Chaucer and teach at other institutions. During the 1974 – 1975 academic year, Gardner returned east to teach when he accepted a Hadley Fellowship at Bennington College in Vermont.
In 1976, he resigned his professorship at Southern Illinois, left his wife, moved back to New York State and accepted a teaching position at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He began teaching and became a favorite at the annual Bread Loaf Conference in Middlebury, Vermont.
Gardner married poet Liz Rosenberg, a student of his from his days at Bennington College, in 1980. They were married only two years. Gardner died in a motorcycle accident near Susquehanna, Pennsylvania on September 14, 1982. His death occurred six days after his divorce with Rosenberg was finalized and a few days before what was to be his third marriage, to Susan Thornton. He is buried in Grandview Cemetery in Batavia, next to his brother Gilbert.
How Does He Make Genesee County Famous?
John Gardner was a best selling novelist who wrote 27 books and is considered one of America’s greatest contemporary novelists. Two of his books, Resurrection and The Sunlight Dialogues, were set in Batavia. Two of his books about writing, On Becoming a Novelist and The Art of Fiction, are used in college classrooms across the country.
With the release of every new book, Gardner received more praise. His novel October Light won the 1976 National Book Critics’ Circle Award. He was interviewed on the Dick Cavett Show on May 16, 1978, and he was the cover story of the New York Times Magazine for July 8, 1979.
After the release of the novel The Sunlight Dialogues, film crews came to Batavia to scout locations for a movie adaptation of the book. Dustin Hoffman was to star in it, but the movie never got past the planning stages.
Probably his most famous novel is Grendel. As an expert in medieval literature, Gardner retold the story of the Old English epic poem Beowulf from the point of view of the monster.
Here is a two-minute video by Gardner's son, Joel, from Camp Gardner Films. Click here for more about Camp Gardner |
More Information:
John Gardner Appreciation Page at Genesee Community College (It contains a lot of great links)
Short Documentary called The Sunlight Man by Joel Gardner
Partial List of the Works Written By Gardner
Do you agree or disagree? Comment on our blog Here
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The Wreckage of Agathon (1970)
Grendel (1971)
The Sunlight Dialogues (1972)
Nickel Mountain (1973)
Jason & Medeia (1973)
The King's Indian (1974)
The Construction of Christian Poetry in Old English
Dragon, Dragon and other Tales (1975)
October 
Gudgekin the Thistle Girl and Other Tales (1976)
In the Suicide Mountains (1977)
The King of the Hummingbirds and Other Tales (1977)
The Poetry of Chaucer 
The Life and Times of Chaucer (1977)
A Child's Bestiary (1977)
Poems (1978)
On Moral Fiction (1978)
Vlemk The Box Painter (1979)
Freddy's Book (1980)
The Art of Living and Other Stories (1981)
John Gardner: Critical Perspectives (1982)
Mickelsson's Ghosts (1982)
Tengu Child: Stories by Kikuo Itaya (Editor) (1983)
On Becoming a Novelist (1983)
Gilgamesh (1984)
The Art of Fiction (1984)
On Writers and Writing (1994)
Lies! Lies! Lies! The College Journal of John Gardner (1999)