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Now's the time to ask yourself what you really know about heroes. No, really: what do you know to be true about them? Got it? Now collect all that up into a little mental sack and throw it from your mind. Inside this Grendel, Gardner--a pretty challenging guy in real life, too--compels us to look closely at what we've believed about noble behavior since the earliest of times.

And what better means to do this than to go back to Beowulf, the earliest epic poem composed in (what passes for) English?

But this time, the boasters need to step aside and make room for the real celebrity. In this book, Grendel, Stalker at the Night, Mere Stomper, Slurper-Downer of Thanes, and Basic Terror to all Humanity gets a Significant makeover. As he tells the story from his point of view, we see more than only a gloomy, cave-dwelling creep of a monster. Grendel is really only a sentimental, misunderstood bully who shows us that the "personalities" of the story are a pack of ignorant, wasteful, violent, vengeful, superstitious bottom dwellers.

All that within one experimental, wickedly humorous, awfully awful story. We watch Grendel as he meets the cast of characters out of Beowulf and tries to set himself in relation to these people who are everything he isn't. That's a tough run for a tender young monster. Each of the people he would like to admire behave in unsatisfactory manners; not only that, they also misinterpret his every little missteps (you know, like eating the people who endanger him) as sure signs that he doesn't belong.

Grendel quickly learns that he's going to be excluded from of all meadhall action indefinitely. So what's a monster to do? Sulk in his cave all day? Or take action and make some "fun" for himself? Thus begins 12 years of war against King Hrothgar and his thanes. When you've read Beowulf, you know how it ends.

However, what you can not see from reading Beowulf--at least not as clearly--are the challenges to what we thought we understood about some heavy issues: the nature of heroism; what it means to be monstrous; the way society and household work; what presence really means. This book has everything: life, the universe, everything. Gardner places these issues front and center as he refocuses the story on what's assumed to be the dark side.

You'll be surprised who you locate there--and that you don't.

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