This is a wonderful book of reviews and criticism that often gets overlooked from that other book of criticism, "On Moral Fiction," or his books on writing: "The Art of Fiction," and "On Becoming a Novelist." "On Writers and Writing" is mostly made up of reviews Gardner published in "The New York Review of Books," and these in themselves are worth the price of the book. However, two gems appear at the end of the book: Julius Caesar and the Werewolf," which may have been the last short story he was working on before his death in September 1982, and "General Plan for 'The Sunlight Dialogues,'" Gardner's "big" book. This is truely a wondeful book from an important, but recently neglected American writer. In a profound way, this book further strengthens Gardner's view that literature matters, that art is life-affirming and should mean something. In retrospect, we could now think of John Garnder as a sort of evangelist for literature.