Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
"No writer I've ever read is as good as George Garrett when it comes to showing me both sides at the same instant. Fact and factoid, respect and derision, truth and falsehood, saint and sinner, art and dross, heads and tails, all show their bold faces in these stern yet cheerful pieces about literary triumphs and quasi-literary follies. There is much here for the younger writer trying to learn the way, but there is also plenty for us to chew on who thought we were veterans." -Henry Taylor
Synopsis
"Going to See the Elephant is a safari into the wilds of the mind of George Garrett, and a more interesting place to explore is hard to imagine. Whether he (or his beleaguered alter-ego, John Towne) is examining the writing life, tipping his hat to other writers, or fulminating about the sorry state of the world we live in, he is well worth a listen - both for the sheer pleasure of it and for the wisdom to be found in it." --R.H.W. Dillard, author of Understanding George Garrett
About the Author
Author of thirty-two books and editor or co-editor of nineteen others, GEORGE GARRETT recently retired from the University of Virginia after a forty-year teaching career. Among his many honors are the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a Sewanee Review Fellowship in Poetry; fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry; the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction; and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife of fifty years.