Writers on Writing, Volume II: More Collected Essays from The New York Times - Hardcover

The New York Times

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805073612 ISBN 13: 9780805073614

Publisher: Times Books, 2003

Synopsis

Today’s most celebrated writers explore the literary life in a second collection of inspiring and eye-opening essays

In a second volume of original essays drawn from the long-running New York Times column, Writers on Writing brings together another group of contemporary literature’s finest voices to muse on the challenges and gifts of language and creativity.

The pieces ranges from taciturn, hilarious advice for aspiring writers to thoughtful, soul-wrenching reflections on writing in the midst of national tragedy. William Kennedy talks about the intersecting lives of real and imagined Albany politics; Susan Isaacs reveals her nostalgia for a long-retired protaganist; and Elmore Leonard offers pithy rules for letting the writing, and not the writer, take charge. Writers on Writing offers an uncommon and revealing view of the writer’s world.

Contributors include Diane Ackerman, Margaret Atwood, Ann Beattie, Geraldine Brooks, Frank Conroy, Chitra Divakaruni, Allegra Goodman, Kathryn Harrison, Mary Karr, Patrick McGrath, Arthur Miller, P. J. O’Rourke, Anna Quinlan, Amy Tan, and Edmund White.

About this title

About the Author

Jane Smiley is the author of ten works of fiction, including Horse Heaven, The Age of Grief, A Thousand Acres, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and Moo. She lives in northern California.

Reviews

The 45 writers who contributed to this second compendium of the weekly column in the Times arts section are nearly all A-list names-and highly contemporary, too, as most of the articles originally coincided with the publication of their latest books. The prosaic headlines ("Fiction and Fact Collide, With Unexpected Consequences") obscure the lively tone adopted by most of the authors, who seem to be enjoying the opportunity to wax anecdotal about various aspects of their career. Thus we have Ann Beattie on the book tour, David Shields about reacting to bad reviews, Elinor Lipman on the perils of getting (and giving) jacket blurbs and Stephen Fry's hilarious account of the questions fans ask about his writing methods. Though some of the authors choose to deal with contemporary events, as in A.M. Homes's eyewitness account of September 11 ("not something you want to remember, not something to want to forget"), nobody strays far from the literary, and quite a few offer insights into the creative process. Kathryn Harrison explains how a photograph seen in childhood led to the writing of The Seal Wife, while mystery writer Marcia Muller reveals that she once built scale models of her protagonist's regular haunts to help her understand the character. And Elmore Leonard offers practical advice on how to write better prose, including this gem: "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." Aspiring writers will find plenty of inspiration-and helpful counsel-from this collection, in which the writing is less stuffy and more relaxed than in a similar collection from the Washington Post.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In Jane Smiley's scintillating introduction to the second collection of columns from the exceptional New York Times series "Writers on Writing," she piquantly observes that in writing about themselves and their art, writers both indulge the urge to tell secrets and battle the fear of disclosure, and this tension is, indeed, present in the two dozen essays that follow. Yet the overriding feeling is that of deep and abiding pleasure in putting thoughts into words and words onto paper. Here's Diane Ackerman marveling over the confluence of psychotherapy and poetry; Alan Cheuse pondering late bloomer-hood; and Leslie Epstein musing over writer's intuition. Allegra Goodman writes amusingly about outwitting the "inner critic"; William Kennedy celebrates fiction and the "metamorphosis of experience"; and Shashi Tharoor puzzles over his quandary as an Indian author writing about India in English. Why write, what about, for whom, and in whose voice are crucial concerns addressed by some of the finest living practitioners of this noble art, and readers will love being privy to their ruminations. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Times Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805073612
• ISBN 13: 9780805073614
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288