"Because of this opinion or general set of thought, the old man--almost without thinking, almost by instinct--was violently repelled by all that senselessly prettified life and, in his own dark view, belied it. He hated the Snoopy in his grandson's lap, hated Coca-Cola and the State of California, which he'd never seen, hated foreign cars, which he identified with weightless luxury and "the Axis", hated foam rubber, TV dinners, and store-bought ice cream. At Christmas, when the stores in the town of Bennington were jubilant with lights, and shoppers' voices, breaking through the muzak and feathery snow, were as clear and innocent as children's cries, James Page would pause, blanching, his hand in his overcoat, his ears sticking out, and would stare in black indignation at a glittering white astronaut doll in a window. Whether or not he could have said what he was feeling, and whether or not it would have mattered to the world or the company that runs it, the old man was right about the meaning of that doll. It was there to undo him, both him and his ghosts. Whether or not it was true, as he imagined, that once in his childhood he'd heard angels sing, and had seen them moving in the aurora borealis, it was undoubtedly true that the muzak made certain he would hear them--if in fact they were still up there singing--no more. It was hard to believe that any soul, however willing, could be uplifted by the conflict of recordings rasping through the snow-flurried air; hard to believe that the nodding, mechanical Santa in the Bennington Bookstore window could be drawn to the house by the magic of a Christmastree [sic] cut with an axe on Mount Prospect's crest and sledded, the children all squealing, to the woodshed door."

-- John Gardner, "October Light", p 12

So far, "Grendel", is still the Gardner novel I most enjoy, but I'm one chapter into "October Light" and (not to echo the bland praise found on the back of the cover) the prose in "October Light" is something spectacularly special. It was hard to put the book down last night to go to bed because I just wanted to keep reading those wonderful words.