John Gardner: C/D?

I refer to John Gardner the American novelist, not John W. Gardner the social philosopher nor John E. Gardner the author of James Bond books.

Honestly curious, have no opinion myself. Someone I once knew and couldn't stand was a fan to a cultish degree.

I've only read 'Grendel', and that quite a few years ago, but I remember enjoying it a lot.

John Gardner is of the puppeteer school of novelists.

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/john-gardner-pugilist-at-rest/

I recall liking "Grendel" fine, and I'm sure I've read another thing or two of his.

But I thought his writing book ("On Becoming a Novelist") was rather heavy-handedly conservative in its aesthetics. He follows a pretty Strunk-and-Whitish bias toward economy of phrase, which comes across as a hatred of fun when taken too far. I guess "omit needless words" is the right advice for some people... but then I think of how many of my favorite books are full of goofily fun over-the-top sentencemaking. It seems a rather dour mantra.

The mystery I want to solve is his reputation as a deep thinker among cultists like my ex-friend. Valid? Ridiculous?

I have a memory of seeing a television documentary about him, and at one point he was surrounded by students and just babbling nonsense.

he had some intractable + contrarian views about 'the modern novel' - cf. the obit. above, or 'on moral fiction' - but i guess they were internally consistent

Never actually read any of this guy's stuff, but I had a high school English teacher who was overly in thrall to whatever Gardner said in On Moral Fiction and was always making disparaging remarks about Poe and Nabokov.