The Sunlight Dialogues

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The Sunlight Dialogues - Wikipedia

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The Sunlight Dialogues
First edition cover
Author	John Gardner
Cover artist	John Napper
Language	English
Genre	Philosophical fiction
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	1972
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback and paperback)
Pages	712 pp
ISBN	0-394-47144-X
OCLC	333602
Dewey Decimal	813/.5/4
LC Class	PZ4.G23117 Su PS3557.A712

The Sunlight Dialogues is a 1972 novel by the American author John Gardner.

Plot summary

The novel is set in the 1960s in Batavia, New York. It follows Batavia police chief Fred Clumly in his pursuit of a magician known as the Sunlight Man, a champion of existential freedom and pre-biblical Babylonian philosophy. As Clumly believes in absolute law, order, justice and a Judeo-Christian world view, the two butt their ideological heads in a number of dialogues, all recorded on audiocassette by Clumly. Each of these two characters attempts to exert power over the other—Clumly with the law behind him and the Sunlight Man with his magic and violence—until they wear down not only each other, but many of the other characters with whom they come into contact. A myriad of side-stories provides background for the plot.

Characters in "The Sunlight Dialogues"

Fred Clumly
Esther Clumly
The Sunlight Man
Domenic "Miller" Sangirgonio
Stan Kozlowski
Will Hodge, Sr.
Mildred Jewel
Will Hodge, Jr.
Luke Hodge
Ben Hodge
Vanessa Woodchurch
Kathleen Paxton
Clive Paxton
Nick Slater
Vernon Slater
Mickey Salvador
John Figlow
R.V. Kleppmann
Mrs. Kleppmann
Walter Benson/Boyle
Marguerite Benson
Oliver Nuper

Critical response

In the Kirkus Reviews, the novel is summated as "A complex and difficult fable of curiously American relevance; a book of bleak humors and raw surprises which mine — and sometimes undermine — the fictional ground with speculative brilliance."^[1]

References

^ THE SUNLIGHT DIALOGUES | Kirkus Reviews.

External links

The Sunlight Dialogues at LibraryThing

v t e Works by John Gardner
Novels	The Resurrection (1966) The Wreckage of Agathon (1970) Grendel (1971) The Sunlight Dialogues (1972) Nickel Mountain (1973) October Light (1976) In the Suicide Mountains (1977) Freddy's Book (1980) Mickelsson's Ghosts (1982) Stillness and Shadows (1986)
Short story collections	The King's Indian (1974) The Art of Living and Other Stories (1981)
Short stories	"The Art of Living" "The King's Indian" "Dragon, Dragon" "Gudgekin The Thistle Girl"
Biography	The Life and Times of Chaucer
Didactic	The Poetry of Chaucer On Moral Fiction On Becoming a Novelist The Art of Fiction (Authoritarian literature)
Poetry	Jason and Medeia (1973)

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