Freddy's Book

"Intriguing", as a one-word title for a review may seem to smack of a rip-off of those paperback blurbs, such as "monumental", and "shattering". I chose this title because the definition of "intriguing" sums up the attributes which make me value the book so highly: "intriguing - to arouse the interest or curiosity of by unusual, new or otherwise fascinating or compelling qualities." It is the richness of those unusual qualities of storytelling which Gardner employs in this book that aroused my curiosity about the meanings it might contain below the surface story. As the book progresses, there is always a hint of mystery, of revelation that hovers just out of range of what is openly discussed through text and dialog. The book is sharply divided into two sections. The initial impression of this compartmentalization into two seemingly unrelated segments might be that this is a stylistic awkwardness, or flaw. At any rate, it is an unconventional way of presenting tales which appear to have a straightforward narrative quality, at least as their primary expression. But this rather enigmatical presentation is,to me, part of the intriguing nature of the book which challenged my comprehension and supplied food for my intellectual capabilities(such as they are)to chew on. The first section begins as a wryly humorous interaction between a gregarious and popular author, Jack Winesap, who has become fashionable in academia through his development and exposition of a hip new slant on history, called psycho-history, and a brilliant, but eccentric and unlikable, scholar of Scandinavian history, Professor Sven Agaard. Their somewhat whimsically presented interchange has Gothic overtones which deepen, as Winesap gets drawn into Professor Agaard's concerns about his son, Freddy, a sensitive young man endowed with the intellect and imagination of a genius, but who is trapped inside the abnormal body of a giant. Due to his abnormality, which is seen as a threat by the world at large, Freddy has received rough treatment at the hands of society, particularly his teachers and fellow students. Now he has hidden himself away, out of sight of the world, to pursue exclusively his own interests. Those interests are a mystery to Professor Agaard, who has little use for flights of fancy, so he has invited Jack Winesap to try and reach Freddy, who admires Winesap's books. Winesap gains enough of Freddy's confidence for Freddy to allow him to read the manuscript of a book which he has been working on. So begins the second and much longer portion of the book -'Freddy's Book' - for which all this first portion has been a prologue. Here we say goodbye to Winesap, Professor Agaard, and Freddy,which will probably be surprising, and maybe a bit irritating to some readers, as we have just gotten acquainted with them. However,of course, Freddy's persona lingers on through the characters he has created in his book. Now, when we enter Freddy's book, we are in sixteenth century Swed

In the years after John Gardner published "On Moral Fiction," his notorious and often misunderstood book arguing for a realism in fiction that tests human ideas through lifelike characters and situations, he seemed to temper his arguments and even backtrack a bit. About "Freddy's Book," the follow-up novel to his controversial work, he admitted in an interview, "I guess in an unconscious way I was trying to say what my earlier argument left out." Indeed, at times the tale seems a partial renunciation; while fascinating and even profound, "Freddy's Book" is as much a hall of mirrors as a novel, blending in unlikely ways the grotesque and the pragmatic, the allegorical and the literal, the medieval and the modern. The first part of the novel begins when Jack Winesap, a "psycho-historian," visits the old-guard Scandinavian medievalist Sven Agaard, who scorns "trying to learn history from fairy tales" and prefers the "old fashioned ideal of history. Hard-won facts, incontrovertible proofs." Taking a page from Gardner's own essays on fiction, Agaard argues that history done properly "would make us better men" ("and women," he corrects himself). But Agaard's house and career are haunted by a "monster" locked away in a room--a son with an endocrinological condition who writes "vaguely historical" prose and turns his father's scholarship into fairy tales. The second half of the book is Freddy's tale itself, featuring the sixteenth-century Swedish King Gustav, Gustav's fictional cousin Lars-Goren Berquist, the nihilistic Bishop Brast, and the Devil. While Gustav fuels his rise by negotiating a Faustian bargain with Satan, Lars-Goren understands that the well-being of civilization depends on slaying the dragon, so to speak. At the end of the tale, however, emanations of a modern, non-supernatural evil (all the more powerful for being completely human) approach from the east. Freddy and his "book" are two tales that, taken together, comment on the nature of history and historiography, author and subject, writer and writing--yet the book's surprising lack of closure (the reader is left imagining what might have become of Winesap, Agaard, and Freddy) underscores that each half is only casually linked with the other. At the same time, Gardner seems almost to mock the dichotomy between his criticism and his own fiction; there is always a "monster" in Gardner's attic sneaking into his stories and novels with new-fangled flavors of "psychohistory," be it fabulism or caricature or metafiction. The book's contradictory, ambiguous impulses keep it from being among his best, but its subtle acknowledgments of the unavoidable paradox between fiction and realism serve as a valuable coda to Gardner's work.

I've now read seven of Gardner's novels, culminating with Freddy's Book. Gardner possesses the innate ability to so exquisitely frame his narravtives (as per Conrad, et al) that the reader is forced (and willingly complies) with the need to operate on dual planes of understanding, constantly reevaluating and connecting the minutiae of the periphery to bulk of the text with stirring results.Freddy's Book is at the same time a sweet tale and one of great consternation for the reader. Certainly, the consternation is not directed at the tale but the truth that lies within. The most difficult face to gaze upon is that of our own as reflected within our souls. Freddy's Book grabs us, indirectly, by the hair and bids us look away from the creative genius of Freddy and at its oafish, reflective cage, highlighting the Freddyism in all of us, the seeker of truth and fairness in world long bereft of both, in the higly-polished bars. Freddy is a martyr. We are the flames that consume him at the stake of innocence. Read this book.

I bought a copy of Freddy's Book in a second-hand bookstore when I was 15 and I have been working on understanding it ever since. I will be accused of hyperbole, but Freddy's Book reminds me of Plato: one plot framed within another, and terribly profound ideas couched in a deceptively simple story. Freddy's book (if you haven't read it) is a novel within a novel containing 1: a picture of modernity and 2: an allegory of modernity's advent. I suggest anyone interested in the history of Western thought mull over this book a few times (if you can find it).

I love John Gardner's work. The only time I can remember being really angry at the death of a "famous" person was when Gardner cracked up his bike. I felt as though I had been betrayed. It isn't just his adult fiction; his books on writing are incredible, his biography of Chaucer is fascinating, his so-called children's books are friggin' wonderful. I've read _Freddy's Book_ six or seven times. It is both the most readable and most difficult book I've ever encountered. I've made three different book groups read and discuss it, which has been a challenge as it's been out of print for awhile. (On the other hand, the book groupies seemed to think it was worth the effort of scouring the 2nd hand bookstores). I still don't understand it all--parts yes. It's a much easier book to read than some of Gardner's other novels (_The Sunlight Dialogues_ comes to mind) but I believe it's his best. When I read Brooks Hansen's novel, _The Chess Garden_, I wondered if he was familiar with Freddy. Although the two books are very different, they are also very similar. I almost never give 10s, but this is a wonderful book. (Now someone is going to dig up a copy to read, and then write a review questioning my sanity/taste/intelligence. Which is why I never take anyone's ratings, including my own, *too* seriously.)