Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23217 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Francine Prose is the author of fourteen books of fiction, including, most recently, A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has taught literature and writing for over twenty years at major universities such as Harvard, Iowa, Columbia, Arizona, and the New School. She is a distinguished critic and essayist. Francine Prose lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Useful and highly enjoyable
The title struck a chord because when I read a good book I'm forever stopping and thinking, `How did she do that?' or `Where did that construction come from?' - and whereas I've always thought of this as a bad idea because it tends to interrupt the flow, Francine Prose actively encourages the habit and indeed demonstrates how to indulge it in forensic detail.

I found Reading Like a Writer quite fascinating. It takes the reader on a crash course in close reading, starting at the level of single words and sentences, then paragraphs, dialogue etc. to explore the writer's intentions with a particular inflection or form of words, and demonstrating that what we enjoy as rhythmic, lucid prose which engages us and carries the narrative along, is the result of careful choices, often so subtle as to be near-invisible. Every point is illustrated by example, and if the list of writers is subjective I would say that's inevitable, perhaps crucial - it's certainly wide enough, and there are several writers whose work I'm keen to explore now that I've been introduced to them.

The author clearly enjoys breaking the `rules' - we share a suspicion of the writing-course mantra `Show, don't tell' - and the final chapter on Chekov, rule-breaker par excellence, shows that we are in good company.
I would recommend the book to anyone interested in good prose, whether to read it or write it.

Be a Better Reader in Order to Become a Better Writer

You certainly are a person who enjoys reading. The beauty of this book is that its author teaches us how to read carefully, deliberately and slowly in order to digest and extract the ideas behind the words, and also to identify the style of an specific writer. By doing so Francine Prose gives us the tool that we may require to become a better writer. Basically is a process of learning by example, and Prose goes all the way to select and bring us a lot of examples, both from classical and contemporary authors.

As you advance through the chapters you will find examples covering the fundamentals of writing, including aspects related to narrative, plot development, characters creation, as well as the basics of sentence and paragraph structure.

Even if you have no intention at all of becoming a writer you will love this book, since it also teaches us how to have a better appreciation of what we read.

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.