The Odds Against a Writer’s Achieving a Great Work of Art are Astronomical

John Gardner, an author and a creative writing teacher and also a professor of medieval literature,shows inOn Writers and Writinghis facet as an advocate for higher artistic and moral standards in fiction.

An invenctive against mere fiction

Writers work out in words their intuitions—their private certainties—of how things are. Good writers have right and significant intuitions, and they present their intuitions intact by means of masterful technique.

Great writers deal with problems which confro...