"Everybody who has ever known George Garrett has been, in one
way or another, his student. This book of meditations on the art and
craft of writing is, simply, treasure, stored up over the years he has
practiced that art or craft better than anyone else, bar none, has
practiced. We are lucky to have it."—Richard Bausch

    "Here is The Literary Life in all its contemporary reality, from glory
to gurry, remembered and related by one of America's true men of
letters, George Garrett, novelist, poet, essays, factotum of the Word.
Going To See the Elephant should be required reading for
everyone setting pen to paper."—Brendan Galvin 

    "No writer I've read is as good as George Garrett when it comes to
showing both sides at the same instant. Fact and factoid, respect
and derision, truth and falsehood, saint and sinner, art and dross,
heads and tails, all show their bold faces in these stern yet cheerful
pieces about literary triumphs and quasi-literary follies. There is
much here for the younger writer trying to learn the way, but there
is also plenty here for us to chew on who thought that we were
veterans. Just wonderful."—Henry Taylor

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Author of thirty-two books and editor or co-editor of nineteen
others, GEORGE GARRETT recently retired from the University
of Virginia after a forty-year teaching career. Among his many
honors are the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters; a Sewanee Review Fellowship in Poetry; fellowships from
the Guggenheim, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations and the
National Endowment for the Arts; the Aiken Taylor Award for
Modern American Poetry; the PEN/Malamud Award for
Excellence in Short Fiction; and an Award in Literature from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Charlottesville,
Virginia, with his wife of fifty years.