Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60963 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Synopsis
This book presents an inside look at how the professionals read and write. 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 the author. 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, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov, and discovers why these writers endure. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breath-taking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's "Middlemarch". She looks to John Le Carre for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield who offer 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.

Customer Reviews

NOT WITHOUT FLAWS, BUT PLENTY OF FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Won't teach you how to write, but it may serve to heighten your awareness of techniques that can be employed to bring credibility to a piece of work. I particularly liked points in the books where she highlights differences between clichéd language and more original language, and emphasises the importance of word economy: how to say only what needs to be said.

I found certain chapters - `Close Reading', `Words', `Narration', `Character', `Dialogue' and `Gesture' - both interesting and informative, and I believe they considerably sharpen the tools needed to critically analyse other's work if we are to improve our own writing and yet avoid overt imitation or, worse, plagiarism.

You do, however, get the impression in two of those interesting and informative chapters - `Character' and `Dialogue' - that, although very good points are made, much of what is included is unnecessary: too often much of these chapters seem to merely serve to summarise lengthy sections of stories she particularly likes, but not provide anything more to a valid point that was made succinctly enough in one or two paragraphs. I wish to avoid being too critical here, though, as the points in these chapters are generally well-made and maybe the length of some of the examples used here is necessary for emphasis; to avoid these points being neglected as incidental digressions.

Here, though, I must mention the two chapters - `Sentences' and `Paragraphs' - that I believe are essentially pointless as they are too analytical of specific examples and bring out little in general that a practising writer may use to inspire their own technique. I would also go as far as to say that where good points are made - in `Sentences' - the examples used to highlight these are not particularly good and, in some cases, serve more to contradict than to clarify. In addition, coming as do so early in the book - chapters one and two - is fairly off-putting and could deter you from wishing to read further, which would be a shame as there is much here for a close and critical reader to consider when approaching their own reading and writing.

And that would be the book in a nutshell: yes, there is a lot to be had from it and is, therefore, worth recommending for that, but there will be the occasional section where you may ask yourself why you are bothering.

All-in-all though, worth the time and effort.

Not very good
This isn't a very good book. It should be re-titled as "How to read like a writer: me". The book starts of nicely with a very interesting chapter concerning Close Reading, but then the quote festival begins. For chapters and chapters all the author does is to present us with huge quotes from literary geniuses and to display a very small and insipid subjective opinion on them which scarcely relates to the chapter topic.
I only give it two stars for the first chapter and the one entitled "Learning with Checkov".
Reading this is a kind of torture: very disapointing.
I would recommend "How to read a book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren.

This Refreshing Book
Francine Prose explicates on writing creatively with a masterful analysis. The rules for storytelling are refreshingly challenged, using many examples of well-known author's writing styles. This is a book for reflective readers, who love the way words are woven to create and tell a story. For writers who want to create stories that are not hidebound by dead rules. In the first chapter Prose poses the question: "Can creative writing be taught?" Her answer to this, we learn to write by trial and error, and by example when reading books. Reading slowly, carefully, and concentrating on the writers for whom every word in a paragraph is essential for reader impact. In my estimation, this is a most stimulating book for anyone fascinated with novel reading and writing.