George Meredith

John Gardiner was born in Perth, Western Australia on June 21st, 1949 (17:00) and still lives in this city. The author's genealogy, paternal and maternal, is rooted in Scottish, English and Irish family trees, with emigration to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, where the Gardiner branch traveled deep into the Mid-West with the railroad. Further emigration followed in the last decade of the nineteenth century with both family lines settling in Western Australia. Characteristic of geographical isolation is detachment from cultural milieu which shape narrative and story-telling, providing an opportunity to engage and explore comparative literature with freedom. Geographically, Australia can be visualized as positioned between Europe and the United States, freely drawing from both cultures, while being longitudinally aligned with Asia (Classical China and Japan). The author's books are enriched with the extraordinarily diverse imagery embedded within these cultures, drawing upon and integrating such wide-ranging stylistic influences as the miraculous flowering of Classical Greece, the profundity of Zen Buddhism, through the Renaissance, Classicism, Romanticism and the vivid commercialism of Pop Culture. Visual (sculpture and painting) and acoustic (drama and music) imagery informs the narrative style of the author's novels as he developed and extended the stylized cinematic frame employed by the renowned English novelist, J.G. Ballard's, condensed novels.