Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143547 in Books
• Published on: 1985-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 180 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Picture the poor, young, serious fiction writer. He toils alone at a pace not so different from that of Lincoln Tunnel traffic at rush hour. His spouse has a "real" job, or perhaps he has a trust fund. His college friends are cashing in on their dot-coms and wondering if he's ever going to join the real world. He is not hell-bent on publication: he is trying to write "serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind of fiction likely to survive." He's likely to have no idea whether he's succeeding. Nobody understands him.

Well, almost nobody. John Gardner understands him. Gardner's sympathetic On Becoming a Novelist is the novelist's ultimate comfort food--better than macaroni and cheese, better than chocolate. Gardner, a fiction writer himself (Grendel), knows in his own bones the desperate questioning of a writer who is not sure whether he's up to the task. He recognises the validation that comes with publishing, just as much as he believes that "for a true novel there is generally no substitute for slow, slow baking." Gardner also has strong feelings about what kind of workshops help (and who they help), and what kind hinders. But a full half of Gardner's book is devoted to an exploration of the writer's nature. The storyteller's intelligence, he says, "is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or incivility." In addition, a writer needs to have "verbal sensitivity, accuracy of eye" and "an almost demonic compulsiveness." But wait--there's more. A writer needs be driven, and to be driven, he says, well, "a psychological wound is helpful". --Jane Steinberg

Customer Reviews

Excellent
I have just taken a creative writing class and four books were suggested as support reading. This is the best of them. Its not a blow by blow technical manual or anthing like that. Its more of an essay that provokes you to think about your writing, people real and fictional, and your own self. I find it quite inspirational, and I would highly recommend it. Its also an enjoyable and entertaining read in itself, which ironically, is not often the case in books about writing. Anyone considering writing a novel should read this before they start. They should probaby read it again when they are half way through, and once more for luck when they think they are nearly finished.

not bad...
Although this book is extremely insightful and very well written, I am not entirely sure that the view a writer would be helped by "a psychological wound" is a healthy one. By all means read it, but read it alongside other writing books that don't suggest depression or psychological torment as a form of writing tool. You can be impassioned without being unhappy.
Apart from that, I would recommend it.