Why I Write: Thoughts on the Practice of Fiction

An anthology of works by such noted fiction writers as Pat Conroy, Rick Moody, Joy Williams, Norman Mailer, Terry McMillan, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace explores the passion fiction writers have for their often maligned vocation. 20,000 first printing.

Twenty-five fiction writers answer the former Esquire literary editor's question: why do you write? Blythe, now fiction editor at Mirabella, envisions this anthology as a counterpoint to the flood of how-to books that assume ``some odd, unspoken consensus that imaginative writing is an activity well worth pursuing.'' His larger question, then, is why should anyone write. Ultimately, there's no better answer than the entertaining diversity of the answers we get here, which are various as snowflakes. They range from the high-minded (Richard Ford champions literature in the age of Seinfeld) to the flippant (Stephen Wright repeats for four pages ``All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy''). Norman Mailer, uncharacteristically humble and brief, writes to feel ``a quintessential religious emotion.'' Mark Jacobson writes for the money, and ``to dis Dad.'' Others, like Terry McMillan, write for deliverance: ``This writing stuff saved me.'' The tone ranges from Thom Jones's profane rant against the ``blow job'' method of career advancement to the pained embarrassment of a perpetually blushing Amy Hempel to Pat Conroy's unabashed song of himself (``When I write a book, I move with all the magic of language toward a fixed star, offering a present of my troubled, violent spirit''). Among the most affecting are Ann Patchett's heartfelt tribute to Alan Gurganus (in which she admits wanting to write because of the elegant, cultured figure cut by Gurganus when he taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence) and Mark Richard's essay, which reads like a novel outline and details the safe haven books provided in his difficult childhood. There's useful advice beneath the inspiration, too: Rick Bass's ``Why the Daily Writing of Fiction Matters'' should be required reading in all creative writing workshops. By turns cantankerous and dreamy, and an inspiration to writers and readers alikea living monument to the vitality and value of the writing life. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Literary editor Will Blythe (formerly of Esquire, now at Mirabella) asked 20 writers why they do the peculiar thing they do. Norman Mailer kicks things off with a meditation on an answer given to him by a friend: "The only time I know the truth is when it reveals itself at the point of my pen." This theme recurs, but one of the delights of this collection is the many unexpected ways the writers approached the question. Some (Lee Smith, Elizabeth Gilbert) talk about the prominence of stories in their family backgrounds. Rick Moody pairs his account of his growing into writing with one written by his mother. Rick Bass and Jim Harrison think about some of the larger implications of what fiction means in the lives of humans. Other answers run the gamut from the incomprehensible (Steven Wright) to the melodramatic (Pat Conroy, Jayne Anne Phillips) to the practical ("For the Money" by Mark Jacobson). In all, an eclectic and stimulating collection; recommended for public and academic libraries.AMary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a why-to, not a how-to. Blythe's wry cataloging of the many good reasons for not writing fiction (the only genre considered here) contrasts with the typically earnest, finger-wagging dismissal of such "excuses" in how-to books impatient to showcase their "successful techniques." As the many valuable contributions here show, much is to be learned from pondering the inverse of those excuses--why one bothers to write. Many of the writers here see a troubling but invigorating duality in the life of fiction writing: it is an "alternative universe," but also, as Jayne Ann Phillips puts it, the "whisper of conscience" in history. It can, Rick Bass says, "sharpen our senses . . . shape movements . . . heal things." Thom Jones responds in a more broadly autobiographical way, tracing the glacial pace of his own ultimately successful development after years of little hope, as does Robert Stone, who explains that writing seemed an answer to the "terrible majesty of silence." How-to would surely be an anticlimax here. Jim O'Laughlin