A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.
In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—[Dostoyevsky][1], [Flaubert][2], [Kafka][3], [Austen][4], [Dickens][5], [Woolf][6], [Chekhov][7]—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of [Philip Roth][8] and the breathtaking paragraphs of [Isaac Babel][9]; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in [George Eliot][10]'s [Middlemarch][11]. She looks to [John Le Carre][12] for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to [Flannery O'Connor][13] for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to [James Joyce][14] and [Katherine Mansfield][15] for clever examples of how to employ gesture to …
Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.
In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—[Dostoyevsky][1], [Flaubert][2], [Kafka][3], [Austen][4], [Dickens][5], [Woolf][6], [Chekhov][7]—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of [Philip Roth][8] and the breathtaking paragraphs of [Isaac Babel][9]; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in [George Eliot][10]'s [Middlemarch][11]. She looks to [John Le Carre][12] for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to [Flannery O'Connor][13] for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to [James Joyce][14] and [Katherine Mansfield][15] for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted.
Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
[1]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL22242A/ [2]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL79039A/ [3]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL33146A/ [4]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL21594A/ [5]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL24638A/ [6]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL19450A/ [7]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL3156833A/ [8]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL4327308A/ [9]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL2657666A/ [10]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL24528A/ [11]: openlibrary.org/works/OL20937W/ [12]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL2101074A/ [13]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL35145A/ [14]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL31827A/ [15]: openlibrary.org/authors/OL65682A/
Prose gives a good overview of different tools in a writer's toolbox (words, character, gesture, and the like). There is also an excellent chapter on "Learning from Chekhov."
Al principio me enganché, pero luego sentí que tal vez es un libro para alguien más pro. Enfocado a escribir literatura. Eso si, tiene un montón de referencias a autores y libros ya que analiza textos para explicar como construir una buena frase, un buen párrafo, detalles, gestos, personajes... No le voy a sacar todo el jugo, pero algo se aprende. Un buen escritor en realidad lee con detenimiento, desglosa, analiza cada palabra e intenta entender la manera en la que se escribió.
I don't know if this book will help people be better writers. However, I do think it will encourage people to slow down a bit when reading literary classics, and to pay attention to more than just their plots.
It is true that Prose doesn't really talk much about genre fiction (except for a couple of references to Raymond Chandler) but I think that's fine. She writes what she knows, and there are plenty of other studies of what makes genre fiction great.
Great excerpts. This left me wanting to read more, and with a list of books to move to the top of the pile.
Mission accomplished, I'd say.
Learn to write by studying the masters. Prose’s opening premise that creative writing cannot taught, but she can help teach us would-be writers by showing us how to learn creative writing through studying the masters. The masters here are Austen, Von Kleist, Tolstoy, Cheever, Babel, Roth, O’Connor, Eliot, Wolfe, Etc. A close reading of the selected passages with Prose’s commentary was reminiscent of college. Beside great examples, the books has a great progression – Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration, Character, Dialogue, Details, Gesture. Her close reading style works well with words and sentences, but is surprisingly effective with the other topics. While I added many of "Books to Be Read Immediately” to my reading list, I was a bit intimated after reading the best of best – even running a mile with world class marathoner is tough, writing after Austen, Tolstoy, and O’Connor is even more daunting.
