He's in New York to iron out the crinkles in the book which neither of them is satisfied with, and to do a rare interview or two. It is 'Nicholson's Ghost' that has brought him into town to talk with editor Robert Gottlieb of Alfred A. He's not embarrassed now, with six novels on the shelves, is new novel 'Freddy's Book' stirring up a storm, another one just finished ('Nicholson's Ghost'), and one in progress ('Shadows'). If people asked me what I was I'd say 'I'm a writer,' because the next question was 'What have you published?' And I'd be embarrassed.' I wrote many articles and translations so that I knew I'd be safe all my life, and then I wrote. You know, I'd read novels by people I thought were awful compared to me. He sits in the shadows, talking about those 15 years of waiting to see his fiction in print: 'I was furious.

Educator, as 'Who's Who' calls him - before author. By the time the National Book Critics Circle called his 'October Light' the best novel of 1976, he had already pick-axed out a career in another field - medievalist, as he calls himself. He wrote novels for 15 years before a single one was published - 'The Resurrection.' He had begun his first novel, 'Nickel Mountain,' at 19, and rewritten it for years until its publication in 1973. Like many sons of the Welsh, he has been down in the mine a long time. This is a room for screts about the dark art of mining words, for whispers about the quarrying of fiction. There will be no 'Sunlight Dialogues' today with John Gardner, the author of that novel and six others. His silver-white lion's mane gleams, the only brightness in the deep brown corner where he sits.

The literary lion waits, crouched in the shadowy cave of a dark-beamed French restaurant.

On becoming a novelist by john gardner