Grendel by John Gardner

December, approaching the year's darkest night, and the only way of the dream is down and through it.
The trees are dead.
The days are an arrow in a dead man's chest. Snowlight blinds me, heartless fire; pale apocalyptic. The creeks are frozen; the deer show their ribs.
I find dead wolves- a paw, a scraggly tail sticking up through snow.
The trees are dead, and only the deepest religion can break through time and believe they'll revive.

And so it goes, on and on poetically heartbreaking, gut wrenching, philosophy questioning prose. John Gardener's Grendel is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. He takes the oldest, most monsterous monster of history (Beowulf's Grendel) and narrates his psychological transfiguration through time, his observances of man's futility, and contemplations of his own strange existence. He never apologizes for what he is though he is tormented by his separation from the on-goings in the meadhalls. It becomes easy to despise the efforts of mankind, especially through the dragons viewpoint.

The dragon has a Tralfamadorian sense of time and knows all that is to come as well as all that has happened. The dragon knows of his own death and tells Grendel of the men he scares, "You improve them! You stimulate them! You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last.... you are mankind, or man's condition." It goes without saying that I freaking love the dragon. I cannot wait to read more of Gardner's work.

6/5