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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.3
EAN: 9780374173401
ISBN: 0374173400
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: July 22, 2008
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely—from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings—Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step.
The result is nothing less than a philosophy of the novel—plainspoken, funny, blunt—in the traditions of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. It sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision. It will change the way you read.
Amazon.com Review:
Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: The first thing you'll notice about How Fiction Works is its size. At 252 pages, it's a marvel of economy for a book that asks such a huge question and right away you'll want to know (as you might at the start of a new novel) what the author has in store. James Wood takes only his own bookshelves as his literary terrain for this study, and that in itself is the most delightful gift: he joins his audience as a reader, citing his chosen texts judiciously--ranging from Henry James (from whom he takes the best epigraph to a book I've ever read) to Nabokov, Joyce, Updike, and more--to explore not just how fiction works, mechanically speaking, but to reflect on how a novelist's choices make us feel that a novel ultimately works ... or doesn't. Wood remarks that you have to "read enough literature to be taught by it how to read it." His terrific bibliography will surely be a boon to anyone's education, but it's his masterful writing that you'll want to keep reading over the course of your life. --Anne Bartholomew
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Wood's beautifully written book adds new insights to the time-honored ways of analyzing novels. Not just for me, a casual reader of fiction, but for my English-professor wife. Don't let that scare you away. While the old chestnuts of narrative voice, setting, etc. are covered, Wood brings new life and depth to each of them. Reading this book will deepen your enjoyment of every novel/short story you read after it.
Rating: -
The book reminds one of some of Virginia Woolf's readers. But the book is better thought out, shorter, and probably a bit more coherent than Woolf. Although saying that, Woolf's books are still outstanding reads and classics in their own way and this is not a negative comment on Woolf.
I have read the book three times and am still amused that he decides to attack amazon.com reviewers for their focus on character problems - justified or not - because amazon reviewers are far, far, below Wood in their literary sophistication.
The book is worth the price. He presents clear and impressive arguments along with historical discussions on the evolution of modern literature including Don Quixote, 1605, The King James version of the Bible, 1611, Robinson Crusoe, 1719; then, on to Fielding's Tom Jones, and the pivotal works of Diderot, Stendahl, Flaubert, and Dostoevsky. Each time I read the book I found a few gems.
As an example, I have read all of Saul Bellow's ... Read More
Rating:  -
1. "Fiction" in the title should have been "Novels in the Classical Canon".
2. The author's "common reader" seems to be someone
- immersed in the Classical Canon, either currently or recently (Examples from books I had read years ago were not presented with enough context to be meaningful to me).
- with an advanced degree or equivalent in literature and literary criticism.
This book bears no resemblance to that portrayed in its advertisements, including those on the book itself. The front inside of the dust jacket states "...enlightening to writers, readers and anyone else interest in what happens on the page." The first quote on the back of the jacket states "... should delight and enlighten practicing novelists, would-be-novelists, and all passionate readers of fiction. -- The Economist"). However, the other three quotes should serve as warning of what the book is (literary criticism of the classics that is itself high literature and intended for aficionados ... Read More
Rating:  -
Points in this book's favor -
It's short, and very readable. In the introduction, Wood promises to be "mindful of the common reader" and to try to "reduce .. the scholastic stink to bearable levels". He does a commendable job of keeping his promise.
Wood's enthusiasm for reading is evident throughout, and is infectious. The strongest aspect of the book are the many specific examples that Wood provides of what works and doesn't work in fiction. Refreshingly, the ratio of positive to negative examples is high, so that we are treated to eloquence inspired by enthusiasm, rather than critical disregard, for the most part. His insights on Chekhov, Joyce, Nabokov (to name just a few) prompt me to go back and (re)read the work in question.
On the other hand:
Although I didn't find Wood's style overtly pompous, there is an inescapable sense that one is reading dispatches from what Walter Kirn, in his wicked New York Times review, refers to as "someone who has ... Read More
Rating:  -
I first discovered this book while perusing the the lit-crit section of the local book store. Although my arms were full, I put down what I had and picked up 'How Fiction Works' and gave it a try.
A few moments later, I put the book down. Perhaps, I thought, it was because of my already-busy day, or the fact that I already had several books that I was more interested in reading. But I couldn't get into this book.
A few weeks later, I was back at the bookstore and decided to give it another try. Again, nothing.
Yesterday it was more of the same. Nothing about this book 'popped' for me. It was over-written and self-indulgent (a sign of which is surely the acclaim by the so-called literary community). It appears that this book was written for the sole purpose of being written. It does not, in any way, come close to the beauty and simplistic complexity of Forster's 'Aspects of the Novel.' (I realize that 'Aspects' was a series of lectures and 'How Fiction' is a book, ... Read More
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