John Gardner

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Behind the Scenes

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After a number of books on the "comedy-suspense" formula, John Gardner has attempted a "straight" novel of some size and complexity [Every Night's a Bullfight, published in the United States as Every Night's a Festival]. It is certainly a workmanlike job, and while it convinces, entertains and sometimes surprises, it lacks depth: everything about it smacks of professionalism and competence; but it doesn't make us think, it has no significance.

Douglas Silver is a well-known director of stage plays. He is appointed director of the tired, established Shireston Festival, set in a sleepy town and noted for its dullness. Silver perks it up. His season of four Shakespeare plays … all startle in some way or another….

[There are many] characters, clashes of temperament, enmities—so many, in fact, that the novel impresses as much through quantity as quality.

What detracts from the book is that Douglas Silver—the "rock hard activator with the quick tongue, yet quite approachable"—appears from Mr. Gardner's unqualified account as an out and out [jerk]. It's hard to decide whether his clichés are the verbal rot of his register of society and profession, or Mr. Gardner's. There is a chi-chi lack of stringency, or satire, in a setting begging for it. Mr. Gardner celebrates Theatre, eulogizes "professionalism", and especially his own conceptions of the four plays the Shireston company put on. The real hero is Shakespeare, who somehow survives Douglas Silver and his enthusiasms—and Mr. Gardner.

"Behind the Scenes," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3639, November 26, 1971, p. 1469.

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