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The Resurrection
When Professor James Chandler learns he is dying from leukemia, he moves his family to his childhood home in Batavia, New York. There, surrounded by loved ones—both new and old—the immediacy of Chandler’s illness strikes them with new force, and the limitations of his mortality become painfully clear. Rich and moving, and imbued with insight, The Resurrection is a poignant story of love in the face of the ultimate tragedy.
245 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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107 people want to read
About the author
John Gardner
403 books462 followersJohn Champlin Gardner was a well-known and controversial American novelist and university professor, best known for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth.
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 29, 2017
A good book and a strong first novel. I was drawn into the tragic story of philosophy professor James Chandler, only in his forties but diagnosed with aggressive leukemia and given mere months to live. He brings his wife and three young daughters back to his hometown of Batavia, New York, to spend his waning weeks with his mother and amidst familiar surroundings.
I liked the earlier chapters best, before the introduction of Viola. She was an intruder in this story that I wished had stayed focused on the Chandler family. The old spinsters added color, but they knew when to exit the stage. Viola didn't and becomes a major character, one I never liked or fully understood. I'm not sure Gardner knew exactly what to do with her. It's said Viola is "evil," and yes, she's socially awkward and eccentric, has a nasty temper and a foul mouth, but what was being foreshadowed was something ominous that never came to pass.
The protagonist, James Chandler, is relegated to a supporting role once he's hospitalized, with Marie and Viola taking center stage. Chandler was such a doting dad early on, but seemed to wholly lose interest in the children once he was laid up in bed, and especially when he becomes obsessed and singularly dedicated to writing his theory of art even as the life is ebbing from his frail body. He didn't finish his race well.
For me, the book started its downward slide with the introduction of John Horne, whose pompous faux-academic ramblings set me to skimming. Gardner could have trimmed these sections, but I suspected he was using these monologues to show off his own erudition and to give the novel a veneer of "literary fiction."
Another shortcoming with Horne was the credulity-stretching coincidence of Horne being a patient in the same hospital as Chandler. Horne, a mental patient who wanders the hospital looking at other patients' charts recognizes Chandler as a contributor to an academic journal in which they each had published articles. I wondered if Gardner was drawing on/paying homage to Kurt Vonnegut's character and alter-ego Kilgore Trout, who first appeared a year earlier in 1965 in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Interesting to note Trout also met the book's protagonist in a hospital.
The book was hovering between a three-and four-star rating until I came to the final three chapters. The tenuous thread holding the story together slipped through my fingers and was lost. Viola's visit to Chandler and especially his inexplicable and mind-boggling visit to her was a major blow, followed up by another of John Horne's mad ramblings, then the final chapter featuring Aunt Betsy's recital. Suddenly the book ends, though I recommend turning immediately back to the prologue, which also serves well as an epilogue.
(My take on Aunt Betsy's recital and her discordant performance was not that she was deaf, but that she was intentionally subjecting the parents to the same torture she endured for decades training their no-talent kids to play piano.)
At the end of the book, among all the loose ends and unresolved plot points, I thought Marie came out the best, certainly the most clearly drawn character. The children were window dressing for the most part, as was Chandler's mother, who I was hoping would be more fully developed. Despite my criticisms of certain characters and chapters, I liked the book and am glad I read it. I'm looking forward to reading more Gardner, having already picked up a paperback of his ambitious later novel The Sunlight Dialogues.
I liked the earlier chapters best, before the introduction of Viola. She was an intruder in this story that I wished had stayed focused on the Chandler family. The old spinsters added color, but they knew when to exit the stage. Viola didn't and becomes a major character, one I never liked or fully understood. I'm not sure Gardner knew exactly what to do with her. It's said Viola is "evil," and yes, she's socially awkward and eccentric, has a nasty temper and a foul mouth, but what was being foreshadowed was something ominous that never came to pass.
The protagonist, James Chandler, is relegated to a supporting role once he's hospitalized, with Marie and Viola taking center stage. Chandler was such a doting dad early on, but seemed to wholly lose interest in the children once he was laid up in bed, and especially when he becomes obsessed and singularly dedicated to writing his theory of art even as the life is ebbing from his frail body. He didn't finish his race well.
For me, the book started its downward slide with the introduction of John Horne, whose pompous faux-academic ramblings set me to skimming. Gardner could have trimmed these sections, but I suspected he was using these monologues to show off his own erudition and to give the novel a veneer of "literary fiction."
Another shortcoming with Horne was the credulity-stretching coincidence of Horne being a patient in the same hospital as Chandler. Horne, a mental patient who wanders the hospital looking at other patients' charts recognizes Chandler as a contributor to an academic journal in which they each had published articles. I wondered if Gardner was drawing on/paying homage to Kurt Vonnegut's character and alter-ego Kilgore Trout, who first appeared a year earlier in 1965 in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Interesting to note Trout also met the book's protagonist in a hospital.
The book was hovering between a three-and four-star rating until I came to the final three chapters. The tenuous thread holding the story together slipped through my fingers and was lost. Viola's visit to Chandler and especially his inexplicable and mind-boggling visit to her was a major blow, followed up by another of John Horne's mad ramblings, then the final chapter featuring Aunt Betsy's recital. Suddenly the book ends, though I recommend turning immediately back to the prologue, which also serves well as an epilogue.
(My take on Aunt Betsy's recital and her discordant performance was not that she was deaf, but that she was intentionally subjecting the parents to the same torture she endured for decades training their no-talent kids to play piano.)
At the end of the book, among all the loose ends and unresolved plot points, I thought Marie came out the best, certainly the most clearly drawn character. The children were window dressing for the most part, as was Chandler's mother, who I was hoping would be more fully developed. Despite my criticisms of certain characters and chapters, I liked the book and am glad I read it. I'm looking forward to reading more Gardner, having already picked up a paperback of his ambitious later novel The Sunlight Dialogues.
December 19, 2023
Another reread. My first time through was decades ago, and it left me feeling unresolved. I was hoping age and wisdom would help it make more sense, but my experience was the same (with added discomfort over the 1960's casual racism and homophobia). However, I still love Gardner's storytelling, so while I don't believe it is his best work, it is still a pleasure to read/hear him set a scene or poke around an idea.
September 3, 2017
"He'd believed in magic, in those days. The old angular comb on his grandmother's dresser had a past that he was always just on the point of divining." 52
"Her look was as vague as Aunt Maud's, but it was a different sort of vagueness: it was as though her mind had penetrated some ultimate secret and remained there, fixed, like a butterfly on a pin." 60
"She'd become a lady, [...] a lady like one of those trees that found out its shape among rocks and sand along the Pacific." 68
"After a time he found himself remembering perfectly distinctly the room where he had slept in his grandfather's house as a child. The late-morning sunlight was brilliant and friendly, and he remembered the pleasure he'd felt in his odd sense that there was no question whatever of anything's being anything else. Every object in the room was familiar and sure and wholly itself, and all the objects in the room were in the room, and nothing that was not there was there, though at night he was never so sure of that as he was in the morning. Even the glossy hardwood bedroom floor was distinct from the hallway floor: There was a low, rounded wooden thing below the door (which stood open, in his memory, looking into his grandmother's room), and on one side of the wooden divider lay the bedroom, on the other, the hall. On the floor but sharply separated from it was the dresser, which had drawers with wooden knobs that would come off, he knew by experiment, and above the drawers a long flat top like the top of a table, and it was all part of the dresser, though not all one thing; and on the dresser top, but not part of it, there was a clock, and beside it, separate, a tray with brushes, combs, pins, and beyond that, boxes and bottles. Between the bedroom and the world outside there was glass, which sunlight could come through but not dust; and when he opened the window, the world was still outside, the room inside, and he himself, leaning on the windowsill smelling the air--flowers, apples, hay drying in windrows on the hill to the west--he himself was both outside and inside the separate, himself." 132-133
"An image of Letchworth took possession of his mind: endlessly pitted, ancient gray rock walls, narrow rock stairways winding down the gorge to the river, brown and turbulent water breaking to white, the falls roaring above, below, on every side, like stead thunder, a chaos of motion crying out to the chaos within: One knew that one could fall, that one had a choice." 138
"He hadn't felt so comfortable in months, he said to himself; but it was a lie, his nerves were ringing like telephone wire." 159
"Only she had really lived those years, drinking deep of the present, not tasting and hurrying on, and mindful of the past not because it was the past but because it came to fulfillment in the present and gave the present its sould." 188-89
"To experience the true aesthetic response, the onlooker must be indifferent to whether the thing represented exists, has ever existed, or may exist in the future." 200
"To see life's beauty whole implies at once the ardent desire to look and the necessity of backing off." 204
"It was the queerest game she'd seen in all her life, she was sure. Anne and Susan would stand by the fence, and Karen would roll and imaginary pair of dice, and then she would give one of them permission to take a certain number of steps, first Anne, then Susan, in turn. The child who first reached the other end of the yard was the winner, and the determining factor, evidently, was Karen's whim." [More...] 207
"[...] she moved away quietly, as she might have moved from a temple where, at least for an instant, she had found herself persuaded." 212
[...] " ' The world of music,' as Aunt Betsy called it. (It brought to Viola Staley's mind a perversely literal image of great, unsubstantial cathedrals made out of solid bass-clef chords, staccato, middle-register crowds, glissando rain, and enormous yellow sun in the key of C# major.)" 216 (Synesthesia)
"Her look was as vague as Aunt Maud's, but it was a different sort of vagueness: it was as though her mind had penetrated some ultimate secret and remained there, fixed, like a butterfly on a pin." 60
"She'd become a lady, [...] a lady like one of those trees that found out its shape among rocks and sand along the Pacific." 68
"After a time he found himself remembering perfectly distinctly the room where he had slept in his grandfather's house as a child. The late-morning sunlight was brilliant and friendly, and he remembered the pleasure he'd felt in his odd sense that there was no question whatever of anything's being anything else. Every object in the room was familiar and sure and wholly itself, and all the objects in the room were in the room, and nothing that was not there was there, though at night he was never so sure of that as he was in the morning. Even the glossy hardwood bedroom floor was distinct from the hallway floor: There was a low, rounded wooden thing below the door (which stood open, in his memory, looking into his grandmother's room), and on one side of the wooden divider lay the bedroom, on the other, the hall. On the floor but sharply separated from it was the dresser, which had drawers with wooden knobs that would come off, he knew by experiment, and above the drawers a long flat top like the top of a table, and it was all part of the dresser, though not all one thing; and on the dresser top, but not part of it, there was a clock, and beside it, separate, a tray with brushes, combs, pins, and beyond that, boxes and bottles. Between the bedroom and the world outside there was glass, which sunlight could come through but not dust; and when he opened the window, the world was still outside, the room inside, and he himself, leaning on the windowsill smelling the air--flowers, apples, hay drying in windrows on the hill to the west--he himself was both outside and inside the separate, himself." 132-133
"An image of Letchworth took possession of his mind: endlessly pitted, ancient gray rock walls, narrow rock stairways winding down the gorge to the river, brown and turbulent water breaking to white, the falls roaring above, below, on every side, like stead thunder, a chaos of motion crying out to the chaos within: One knew that one could fall, that one had a choice." 138
"He hadn't felt so comfortable in months, he said to himself; but it was a lie, his nerves were ringing like telephone wire." 159
"Only she had really lived those years, drinking deep of the present, not tasting and hurrying on, and mindful of the past not because it was the past but because it came to fulfillment in the present and gave the present its sould." 188-89
"To experience the true aesthetic response, the onlooker must be indifferent to whether the thing represented exists, has ever existed, or may exist in the future." 200
"To see life's beauty whole implies at once the ardent desire to look and the necessity of backing off." 204
"It was the queerest game she'd seen in all her life, she was sure. Anne and Susan would stand by the fence, and Karen would roll and imaginary pair of dice, and then she would give one of them permission to take a certain number of steps, first Anne, then Susan, in turn. The child who first reached the other end of the yard was the winner, and the determining factor, evidently, was Karen's whim." [More...] 207
"[...] she moved away quietly, as she might have moved from a temple where, at least for an instant, she had found herself persuaded." 212
[...] " ' The world of music,' as Aunt Betsy called it. (It brought to Viola Staley's mind a perversely literal image of great, unsubstantial cathedrals made out of solid bass-clef chords, staccato, middle-register crowds, glissando rain, and enormous yellow sun in the key of C# major.)" 216 (Synesthesia)
October 2, 2019
A young philosopher moves back to his hometown with his family when he finds he has leukemia and only a short time to live. He tries to approach his death philosophically and logically. Returning to his hometown brings his past and present together. As he nears his end his ruminations alternate with nightmares. He withdraws more and more, but there is one final chance for a "resurrection". It was all a little too deep for me I suspect and I found the book to be a just okay read..
September 26, 2020
good writing I just found it boring
December 8, 2013
The Resurrection, John Gardner's first published novel, tells the story of philosophy professor James Chandler's final days. In his early forties with a young wife (Marie) and three young daughters, Chandler learns that he's been stricken with an aggressive form of leukemia and has, at best, three months to live. With the death sentence imposed and the clock ticking, Chandler decides to move his family back east, from San Francisco to the town of Batavia in upper New York State, where he spent his childhood and where his elderly mother still lives in the old family home. Batavia, it turns out, is largely unchanged from when he was young, though it and the people he knew have aged considerably and become eccentric. Soon after arriving Chandler visits the home of his old piano teacher and her two elderly sisters, where, dizzied and overwhelmed by ghosts from his past, he suffers a seizure outside on the street after taking his leave. It is Viola Staley, the teenage niece of the three old women, who comes to the rescue and drives Chandler to the hospital. Viola, impressionable and exhibiting an engaging mixture of impetuosity, decisiveness, awkward vulnerability and creeping self-doubt, moves into the Chandler home to help Marie and Chandler's mother care for the girls. In a short time Viola develops a singular fascination with the family and a violent emotional attachment for Chandler himself. In the meantime, Chandler, recovering in the hospital, encounters John Horne, a man disfigured by misfortune whose doctor has told him he is dying. Horne, who comes across as a twisted projection of Chandler's aesthetic theories, berates Chandler at length with his own theories. It is with Horne that the novel comes somewhat unhinged. Gardner allows this character too much latitude to sound off and dominate page after page, with the unfortunate result that the reader is sorely tempted to skip these passages. The novel's ending is inconclusive and not entirely plausible, bringing Chandler and Viola together under contrived circumstances in a scene that would be more at home in a Gothic potboiler. Still, there is a lot to admire in The Resurrection, in particular Gardner's descriptive powers, and his ability to construct scenes, build dramatic tension, and infuse his characters with startling individuality. In the 1970s this author's genius would be fully realized in works like Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues and October Light. This early novel might be inferior but is still well worth reading if you're curious to see what the young John Gardner was capable of.
March 15, 2010
An attitude is as dangerous to develop as an open mind is difficult to keep. And I faced that danger and wrestled with that difficulty as I read this one. Rougher spots (and there are many) attributable to first novel greenness, I suppose. The character Voila was the hardest to swallow. Difficult to discern her motivation and even when you come up with several plausible theories as to what might be making her tick, she's still not presented in a believable fashion. And, Mr. Gardner, just because you majored in philosophy (or mired yourself in it while pursuing another major) doesn't mean that the average reader can be caught up in the finer points of debates and arguments that, I assume, philosophy grad students used to while away the wee hours with until fantasy football was invented.
It's clear to me that his novel involved more than a bit of shadowboxing and warm up, at least in terms of ideas presented, for Gardner's controversial critical work: Moral Fiction ... which is every bit as interesting (and, at times, spot on) as it is pompous.
I'm not nearly clever enough to understand all that J.G. was alluding to, symbolizing and constructing in this novel, but I've got enough gut instinct to know that the sum total of it didn't make up for the lack of visceral impact, no matter how clever it was. As Lewis Reed said, "I guess I'm just dumb, cos I know I ain't smart, but deep down inside ..." Ah, you finish the thought.
It's clear to me that his novel involved more than a bit of shadowboxing and warm up, at least in terms of ideas presented, for Gardner's controversial critical work: Moral Fiction ... which is every bit as interesting (and, at times, spot on) as it is pompous.
I'm not nearly clever enough to understand all that J.G. was alluding to, symbolizing and constructing in this novel, but I've got enough gut instinct to know that the sum total of it didn't make up for the lack of visceral impact, no matter how clever it was. As Lewis Reed said, "I guess I'm just dumb, cos I know I ain't smart, but deep down inside ..." Ah, you finish the thought.
May 21, 2025
My third read, I believe; the first was 40 years ago. I liked it better then than now. Part 1 is 5 stars but after that the characters have too many dreams and reveries. I think 40 years ago the philosophy the characters spout hit me like a revelation, setting this novel apart from anything I’d read up till then. I was mesmerized and energized. That infusion of philosophy is still appealing, but alone it fails to hold the novel together sufficiently. Part 1 is a road to Oz tale, with a beginning, middle, and end, completely satisfying. Parts 2 and 3 meander. (Apparent from a 2025 perspective, there is casual racism and misogyny that I didn’t notice before, mild and, given the date of composition, forgivable. However—and this next was so very annoying to me (out of all proportion really)—Gardner never clarifies Viola’s age. She’s labeled a “girl,” yet she is the child of the brother of elderly aunts—peers of the protagonist’s mother. The protagonist is 41, so Viola should be roughly his age. Yet she behaves like someone supposed to be 18, 19, or early 20’s at most. Gardner never describes her looks fully, nor does he give the circumstances of her birth. I consider this a flaw in the writing, which is otherwise impeccable.)
January 17, 2013
This first novel (1966) by Gardner is intellectually deep and for the most part narratively satisfying. It's all about the fact that we live for a while and then die, and the relation between the living and the dead. It gets me thinking about the fact that we live most of our days not focusing on our eventual death or the vast weight of eternity stretching before and after our tiny light.
I say it is only partially satisfying because the ending is frustratingly vague and unresolved. It comes close to a being multi-level work of art such as THE WHITE HOTEL or THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY, but it seems as if the young Gardner did not figure out how to bring his philosophical story to a final act that does anything more than stop.
Despite the weakness of the last section, this novel includes beautiful writing and really made me think about the problem or opportunity of consciousness.
I say it is only partially satisfying because the ending is frustratingly vague and unresolved. It comes close to a being multi-level work of art such as THE WHITE HOTEL or THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY, but it seems as if the young Gardner did not figure out how to bring his philosophical story to a final act that does anything more than stop.
Despite the weakness of the last section, this novel includes beautiful writing and really made me think about the problem or opportunity of consciousness.
October 31, 2012
Very hard to follow. It was his first book. There are some gems of insight but you have to slog through a lot to find them. I guess though the over-riding take away was the image of the Aunt banging away on the piano at the recital and the child's realization that she is deaf and can't hear what she is playing. She is not Beethoven so it is a great metaphor for anyone that is convinced of what they think they know not taking into account that our reality can only ever be based on what we can access with our senses and even then that is imperfect and can be distorted- so for us is there even any such thing as 'reality'. Also backs up Whitehead's theory that all philosophy is just a footnote to Plato (as in allegory of the cave in this instance).
October 31, 2007
I like Gardner as a person and I enjoyed Freddy's Book, but I just could not get anywhere with this one.
December 6, 2012
More like 3.5
Well structured and brilliant characterization. It is clear that the makings of Mickelson's Ghosts were present in 1966. The seeds are sown throughout the pages.
Well structured and brilliant characterization. It is clear that the makings of Mickelson's Ghosts were present in 1966. The seeds are sown throughout the pages.
March 8, 2013
pretty words, hope.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews