Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing - Softcover

Rosenblatt, Roger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061965618 ISBN 13: 9780061965616

Publisher: Ecco, 2011

Synopsis

Multiple award-winner Roger Rosenblatt has received glowing critical acclaim for his exceptional literary works—from the hilarious novels Lapham Rising and Beet to his poignant, heartbreaking, ultimately inspiring memoir Making Toast. With Unless It Moves the Human Heart, the revered novelist, essayist, playwright, and respected writing teacher offers a guidebook for aspiring authors, a memoir, and an impassioned argument for the necessity of writing in our world. In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Rosenblatt’s Unless It Moves the Human Heart provides practical insights and advice on the craft, exquisitely presented by one of contemporary literature’s living treasures.

About this title

About the Author

Roger Rosenblatt  is the author of six off-Broadway plays and eighteen books, including Lapham Rising, Making Toast, Kayak Morning and The Boy Detective. He is the recipient of the 2015 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

From the Back Cover

For more than forty years, distinguished author Roger Rosenblatt has also been a teacher of writing, guiding students with the same intelligence and generosity he brings to the page, answering the difficult questions about what makes a story good, an essay shapely, a novel successful, and the most profound and essential question of them all—why write?

Unless It Moves the Human Heart details one semester in Rosenblatt's "Writing Everything" class. In a series of funny, intimate conversations, a diverse group of students—from Inur, a young woman whose family is from Pakistan, to Sven, an ex–fighter pilot—grapples with the questions and subjects most important to narrative craft. Delving into their varied lives, Rosenblatt brings readers closer to them, emotionally investing us in their failures and triumphs.

More than a how-to for writers and aspiring writers, more than a memoir of teaching, Unless It Moves the Human Heart is a deeply felt and impassioned plea for the necessity of writing in our lives. As Rosenblatt wisely reminds us, "Writing is the cure for the disease of living. Doing it may sometimes feel like an escape from the world, but at its best moments it is an act of rescue."

Reviews

Culled from his experiences teaching writing workshops, novelist, essayist, and longtime professor Rosenblatt (Making Toast) tackles the "why"--not the "how"--of writing by chronicling his winter/spring 2008 semester of "Writing Everything," wherein students discuss and write short stories, essays, and poetry. Chapters include these students' work; Rosenblatt's humor, wit, and wisdom; and classroom discussions of questions both obvious (how does a story differ from an essay?) and remarkably precise (how does James Joyce convey so much in the first sentence of "Clay" and what does it all mean?). The author repeatedly points out that he cannot teach his students to be professional writers, but rather to simply write better than they did before. Less a how-to book than a measured reflection on teaching, the work nonetheless offers aspiring writers many concrete suggestions (let your nouns do the work; go for imagination over invention; write with "restraint, precision, and generosity"). And the oft-invoked words of other authors should resonate with readers and writers alike. (Jan.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061965618
• ISBN 13: 9780061965616
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176