A Writer's Companion - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080711992X ISBN 13: 9780807119921

Publisher: LSU Press, 1995

Synopsis

In A Writer’s Companion, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., has drawn on his years of accumulated wisdom―as well as the advice of some fifty prominent writers from various fields―to put together in a single volume a vast array of information. Organized in such a way as to make it exceptionally easy to use, and enhanced by Rubin’s graceful and witty prose, A Writer’s Companion will merit a place on the desk of every serious wordsmith. It is also a book that will bring endless hours of pleasure to anyone who enjoys reading simply for the sake of gaining new knowledge. As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.”

About this title

About the Author

Louis D. Rubin, Jr., the founder of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and a founding member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, taught English and creative writing for many years, mainly at Johns Hopkins University, Hollins College, and the University of North Carolina. He has written or edited some forty-five books of his own, the most recent of which are The Heat of the Sun, The Edge of the Swamp, Small Craft Advisory, and The Mockingbird in the Gum Tree. His first novel, The Golden Weather, was reissued in the LSU Press paperback series Voices of the South. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and in his spare time pursues his interests in painting, boating, military history, and baseball.

Jerry Leath Mills is professor of English at the University of North Carolina. He is editor of Studies in Philology and a passionate hunter and angler.

Reviews

An assessment of A Writer's Companion will most likely depend upon the setting in which it is used. Its two Library of Congress subject headings sum up the options. In a library, especially one with a reasonably good reference collection, the subject heading "Literary curiosa--Handbooks, manuals, etc." characterizes it well. If, on the other hand, one is an author or editor working outside a library, then the other heading fits: "Handbooks, vade-mecums, etc." Rubin explains that this book is "not designed to replace specialized reference sources" but "gather[s] material . . . in sufficient detail, on a variety of topics--topics about which, from my own experience and that of others, it seemed to me that writers and editors would find useful to have information available within the covers of a single volume."

In the absence of an index, the primary point of access to the book is the table of contents, an outline of its 19 topical chapters. Broad topical areas covered include transportation, architecture, music, literature and language, religion and folklore, psychoanalysis, philosophy, gastronomy, and sports. The most thoroughly developed chapters are those that apply to the arts, history, and transportation/travel. Each section is a list, generally briefly annotated, of something--for example, downtown hotels in American cities, historical battles, great architectural works, notable sculptors, famous operas, current slang, popular radio shows, ancient deities, professional quarterbacks, or "some reference books that writers use." This last chapter is an ironic coda; like the references at the conclusion of each subsection, it cites numerous specialized sources that in almost every case outperform the lists in A Writer's Companion. Yet writers should be wary of its recommendations of superseded editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the Columbia Encyclopedia, and the Times Atlas of the World.

One cannot deny that a certain delight can be had by browsing through a list of occupations famous writers have filled, a list of famous cats, or statements of immutable laws in science and other fields. This book, much like the The People's Almanac Presents the Book of Lists (Little, Brown, 1993), can be great fun to browse. However, neither is a reference work of choice for libraries, especially not A Writer's Companion, most of whose sections have authoritative, more comprehensive, more informative book-length counterparts in reference collections.

For this companion, Rubin?editor, distinguished scholar, and, most recently, novelist (The Heat of the Sun, LJ 9/1/95)?excluded information found easily in the World Almanac and Roget's but otherwise included miscellaneous information that he and some 55 other writers thought would be helpful and browsable. Their assemblage of information, meant to be "of particular use to writers and editors," has 19 sections (e.g., "Sports," "The Animal Kingdom") divided into 66 subsections (e.g., "Pennant Contenders," "The Pro Quarterbacks"). Like many companions, the book includes unique lists and is fun to browse. However, its content is not as interesting or as useful as that of such books as The People's Almanac or the Book of Lists. This offering would be more useful in the home or office than the library.?Peter Dollard, Alma Coll. Lib., Mich.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080711992X
• ISBN 13: 9780807119921
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1088
• Editor: Rubin Jr. Louis D.