Well, gentle reader, we have read Grendel.
Whew!
So what did you think? And what do you think? Where do you place yourself on the Shaper-Dragon-Beowulf spectrum? We know all about poor Grendel's accident; how do we avoid our own?
And finally, what did you think of John Gardner's letter to those students? Let's pretend for a moment that Gardner is still alive... how would you respond to this letter? It's tone? It's content? It's anything?
Be brave, draft a response letter, and post it to the comments of this entry.
Dear John Gardner,
...
Dear John Gardner –
ReplyDeleteHere we are, at life awheeling upon our spirits, and so to what reasons do these motions guide?- you have executed perfectly the whole spectrum that encompasses the madness that balances our human each our human act- and I believe you’ve left it up to us to interpret. I’m going to go out on this far-reaching limb and say we should enjoy our Grendel-ness more than our Beowulf-ness, because to be Beowulf we have a fate outside us, but to be Grendel is to be subject to our own, and to its honesty total. You tell then what I would consider a lie of truth. How, do you believe, the story would play out from other perspectives then? Because Grendel I see is the lie that reveals that truth, and the men, no better in their speaking because they abstract. Other than applaud the achievement for what is done by it, I will say that I firmly rest between extremes with the joy of being firmly there. I will be able to refute nihilism, to understand the absolutes of our continuously defined universe, and will articulate with them – you reveal that language that is born of philosophies – a language that takes us to a realm of perspective. But are eyes are given and the storyteller does achieve a true aim of light. What is revealed is not made magnificent nor hid away from shine but is. From all that has been spilled forth by ‘the tongue of Grendel’ I will go on with my humanity and my earthliness in position to bring us from what hopelessness we have positioned ourselves by the act of articulating our convictions. The path of joy, thusly, I consider same as all hero’s but a step removed from the wrecking grandeur that is attempted; we can only be as our feet stand; and in that a thousand redemptions uniting with oneness in the human condition
Delayed reaction, but...WHAT?
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