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Synopsis
How Fiction Works
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Review
Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: The first thing you'll notice about How Fiction Works is its size. At 252 pages, it's a marvel of economy for a book that asks such a huge question and right away you'll want to know (as you might at the start of a new novel) what the author has in store. James Wood takes only his own bookshelves as his literary terrain for this study, and that in itself is the most delightful gift: he joins his audience as a reader, citing his chosen texts judiciously--ranging from Henry James (from whom he takes the best epigraph to a book I've ever read) to Nabokov, Joyce, Updike, and more--to explore not just how fiction works, mechanically speaking, but to reflect on how a novelist's choices make us feel that a novel ultimately works ... or doesn't. Wood remarks that you have to "read enough literature to be taught by it how to read it." His terrific bibliography will surely be a boon to anyone's education, but it's his masterful writing that you'll want to keep reading over the course of your life. --Anne Bartholomew
About the Author
James Wood is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a visiting lecturer in English and American literature at Harvard. He is the author of two essay collections, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self, and of a novel, The Book Against God.
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- PublisherVintage
- Publication date2009
- ISBN 10 1845950933
- ISBN 13 9781845950934
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages240
- Rating
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Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A deep, practical anatomy of the novel from 'the strongest . literary critic we have' (New York Review of Books)Rediscover this deep, practical anatomy of the novel from 'the strongest . literary critic we have' (New York Review of Books) in this new revised 10th anniversary edition.What do we mean when we say we 'know' a fictional character?What constitutes a 'telling' detail?When is a metaphor successful?Is realism realistic?Why do most endings of novels disappoint?In the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue, realism, and style. In his first full-length book of criticism, one of the most prominent critics of our time takes the machinery of story-telling apart to ask a series of fundamental questions.Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Beatrix Potter, from the Bible to John Le Carre, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, it incisively sums up two decades of bold, often controversial, and now classic critical work, and will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone interested in what happens on the page.'Should find a place on every novel-lover's shelf. It has the quality all useful works of criticism should have- refined taste, keen observation, and the ability to make the reader argue, passionately, with it' Financial Times Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue, realism, and style. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781845950934
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