"As a student at DePauw University in 1952, John Gardner kept a notebook to which he gave the seemingly playful title Lies! Lies! Lies! The journal offers a revealing glimpse into the youthful mind of a brilliant writer." "While contemplating his upcoming marriage, and entering a writing contest (in which he is pulling for another DePauw student, a future writer named John Jakes), Gardner ruminates on his prodigious readings in Dumas, Fielding, Swift and Thackeray, and records a series of boyish college pranks, all the more amusing for the sophisticated intelligence of the perpetrator." "Introduced by novelist Thomas Gavin (himself a former student of Gardner), this is the first publication of this journal, in any form, anywhere. It is reproduced here in a facsimile edition, preserving the writer's clear and fastidious penmanship, followed by a printed transcription of the text."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved