Can somebody point me in the direction of some good books of essays on writing? This summer, I read Baxter's "Burning Down the House," "On Writing" by Eudora Welty, and a bit of DuFresne's (sp) book about truths and lies or whatever. I've also tried to read Joyce Carol Oates' book, and Stephen King's. Baxter's essays were pretty great, but I don't remember a thing about them now that I don't have the book right in front of me. And the others were just okay. Lately, the only essays that have stuck with me are Octavia Butler's in "Blood Child."
I feel a little lost with the writing right now. But when I went to the book fair and heard Richard Price and ZZ Packer and Andrew Sean Greer and Robert Boswell and Mark Jude Poirer talking about craft and stuff, I remembered all kinds of things and got fired up again. I guess I just want somebody good in my ear saying they didn't know what they were doing, either. But then they discovered how and all that. Point me to those books.
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8 comments:
You named all the ones I would have. Baxter wrote a new book on subtext that I bought and then I think lost.
Zadie Smith has an essay in a recnet Believer that really turned me upside down. I can hook you up before 5 Things if I remember.
Julia Alvarez's Something to Declare might be good?
this is the most recent article that made me want to write like crazy.
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
That link got lost some how.
Sorry bout that. (You could just search "new yorker" and "latebloomers" and it will pop up.
Awesome. Good. I read that Zadie Smith article. I loved it. That's what I'm looking for.
I'll check out Alvarez, and the New Yorker.
Pre program I loved Gardner's The Art of Fiction and Madison Smartt Bell's Narrative Design, but I don't know how I'd receive them now.
Post Program I love, love, love The Eleventh Draft ed. Frank Conroy, and yes it has an Iowa focus and yes you can make fun of me if you want for being so obvious. But I also love Nabokov's Lectures on Russian Literature, a real treat.
And Stanislavski's Building A Character--a book left over from my theatre major days that I never used then but have, since my transformation into a different person, relied on quite heavily at times.
Thanks, Carmen. I've never read any of Nabokov's nonfiction.
I really like Mark Jude Poirer's writing, not to mention ASG and ZZP. Sounds like you're inspired and that's great to hear.
Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" always works for me.
I don't think you're necessarily looking for craft books, but Peter Selgin's "By Cunning and Craft" was particularly helpful in the classroom last year, and it was a great refresher for me. I highly recommend it.
For some unknown reason I'm still convinced that "Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism" is the absolute best book a writer could ever read, even though it doesn't once comment on the writing process or theory or craft or whatever.
And I know Bret Anthony Johnston has edited a new, fairly expansive book called Naming the World? Very Iowa, lots of contributors, lots of exercises, lots of mini essays from what I've seen.
Ditto cdee on "The Eleventh Draft." One of my favorites is Barry Hannah's, re-published in Front Porch (remember that beast?): http://frontporchjournal.com/issue20_nonfiction_hannah.asp
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