Going to See the Elephant

George Garrett is the author of 34 books. He has served as the Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia and has been honored with many awards, including the T.S. Eliot Award, the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction.

"Everybody who has ever known George Garrett has been, in one way or another, his student. This book of meditations on the art and craft of writing is, simply, treasure, stored up over the years he has practiced that art or craft better than anyone else, bar none, has practiced. We are lucky to have it."_Richard Bausch "Here is The Literary Life in all its contemporary reality, from glory to gurry, remembered and related by one of America's true men of letters, George Garrett, novelist, poet, essays, factotum of the Word. Going To See the Elephant should be required reading for everyone setting pen to paper."_Brendan Galvin "No writer I've read is as good as George Garrett when it comes to showing both sides at the same instant. Fact and factoid, respect and derision, truth and falsehood, saint and sinner, art and dross, heads and tails, all show their bold faces in these stern yet cheerful pieces about literary triumphs and quasi-literary follies. There is much here for the younger writer trying to learn the way, but there is also plenty here for us to chew on who thought that we were veterans. Just wonderful."_Henry Taylor