Lean, Experimental, Philosophical, Conspicuously Clever, and Snarky
No one could ever accuse John Gardner of being intellectually lazy or stylistically sloppy. His prose cuts like a knife—straight down to the bone:
It was a cold-blooded lie that a god had lovingly made the world and set out the sun and moon as lights to land-dwellers, that brothers had fought, that one of the races was saved, the other cursed. Yet he, the old Shaper, might make it true, by the sweetness of his harp, the cunning trickery. It came to me with a fierce jolt that I wanted it... I wanted it, yes! Even if I must be the outcast, cursed by the rules of this hideous fable. (55)
There it is: direct, smart, kind of cruel. How appropriate for a narrator who's raw from the experiences of life and not the type to filter his thoughts (or actions, or words).
Gardner himself is pretty fearless in this novel. He's not afraid to grapple with heavy issues, but he insists on doing it as directly as possible, even if that means throwing tact to the wind. He does it all with the trademark dark humor we associate so closely with Grendel:
I decided to kill her. I firmly committed myself to killing her, slowly, horribly. I would begin by holding her over the fire and cooking the ugly hole between her legs. I laughed harder at that... I would kill her, yes! I would squeeze out her feces between my fists. So much for meaning as quality of life. I would kill her and teach them reality. (109-110)
We get a full-access pass inside the characters' brains, and all the disturbing, confused and heartbreaking material we find there produces colorful variations on the page: from Grendel's manic rants and pranks to carefully scripted conversations and philosophical treatises. It's quite a ride, folks.