{"id":1267,"date":"2007-08-11T15:07:55","date_gmt":"2007-08-11T19:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2007-08-11T15:07:55","modified_gmt":"2007-08-11T19:07:55","slug":"on-john-gardner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1267","title":{"rendered":"On John Gardner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The novelist John Gardner, author of the James Bond novels of the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s and two novels about Professor Moriarty, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/08\/08\/AR2007080802307.html\">passed away about a week ago, on August 3rd<\/a>.  He was 80.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, he had been in ill-health for about a year, suffering a mild stroke earlier in the year.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t call Gardner a great author, but I read some of his work.  And I enjoyed what I read.  He lived in Charlottesville for a time; I always thought that was neat.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve read about half of Gardner&#8217;s Bond novels.  Great literature?  No.  But then, neither were Ian Fleming&#8217;s novels great literature.  But Gardner had a better grasp of plot than Fleming &mdash; Fleming&#8217;s strength was in the characterization and the minutiae and detail he put into his work &mdash; and I&#8217;d say that I enjoyed most of the Gardner Bond novels that I read.<\/p>\n<p>Gardner&#8217;s two Moriarty novels are somewhat difficult to come by, but I&#8217;d managed that trick in the mid 90s.  I enjoyed them more than Michael Kurland&#8217;s similar series about the Napoleon of Crime.<\/p>\n<p>Raise a glass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The novelist John Gardner, author of the James Bond novels of the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s and two novels about Professor Moriarty, passed away about a week ago, on August 3rd. He was 80. Apparently, he had been in ill-health for about a year, suffering a mild stroke earlier in the year. I wouldn&#8217;t call Gardner<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1267\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On John Gardner&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[193],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-obituary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}