Grudin graduated from Harvard, and earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1992-1993. Until 1998 he was a professor of English at the University of Oregon.

Grudin is the author of the metafictional novel Book, Mighty Opposites: Shakespeare and Renaissance Contrariety, The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation, On Dialogue: An Essay in Free Thought, Time and the Art of Living, The Most Amazing Thing, and, most recently, American Vulgar: The Politics of Manipulation Versus the Culture of Awareness.

Fiction

• A Novel (1992) (ISBN 0-6794-1185-2)
• The Most Amazing Thing (2001) (ISBN 0-9658-9951-9)

Non-fiction

• Mighty Opposites: Shakespeare and Renaissance Contrariety (1979) (ISBN 0-5200-3666-2)
• Time and the Art of Living (1982) (ISBN 0-0625-0355-3)
• The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation (1990) (ISBN 0-8991-9940-2)
• On Dialogue: An Essay in Free Thought (1996) (ISBN 0-8991-9940-2)
• American Vulgar: The Politics of Manipulation Versus the Culture of Awareness (2006) (ISBN 1-5937-6102-3)