The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
John Gardner
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 0679734031
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This classic guide, from the renowned novelist and professor, has helped transform generations of aspiring writers into masterful writers—and will continue to do so for many years to come.
John Gardner was almost as famous as a teacher of creative writing as he was for his own works. In this practical, instructive handbook, based on the courses and seminars that he gave, he explains, simply and cogently, the principles and techniques of good writing. Gardner’s lessons, exemplified with detailed excerpts from classic works of literature, sweep across a complete range of topics—from the nature of aesthetics to the shape of a refined sentence. Written with passion, precision, and a deep respect for the art of writing, Gardner’s book serves by turns as a critic, mentor, and friend. Anyone who has ever thought of taking the step from reader to writer should begin here.
slightly alter natural law, but granting the alteration, what follows is made to seem thoroughly probable and at least poetically true by the writer’s close attention to the natural flow of moral cause and effect, a flow minutely documented with details drawn from life. As the story progresses, the sleepless Angelino walks, talks, and thinks more and more slowly. Sometimes whole days pass between the beginnings and ends of his sentences. We “believe” the narrative not just because the tale voice
gratification, you understand—and says, ‘It looks like a hole, it’s located like a hole—blamed if I don’t believe it is a hole!’” Baker, we understand, has been out in the wilderness too long and has gone a little dotty—or else (more likely) he’s pulling the leg of the credulous narrator who reports his story as gospel. Either way, no one but the narrator imagines for a moment that what Baker is saying is true. What makes the lie delightful is the pains Baker takes to make it credible. The
fear—human beings cease to be of anything more than scientific and sentimental interest. For the writer who views his characters as helpless biological organisms, mere units in a mindless social structure, or cogs in a mechanistic universe, whatever values those characters may hold must necessarily be illusions, since none of the characters can do anything about them, and the usual interplay of value against value that makes for an interesting exploration of theme must here be a cynical and
as, having committed oneself to the key of D minor, one adapts the generative emotion to the resonance of that key; one would have said something different in the “happier” key of G major. A few years ago, or so I’ve been told, a group of sound technicians conducted an experiment to discover whether they could heighten the “presence” of recorded music by multiplying tracks and speakers. The result was quadraphonic sound, but on the way to that result a strange thing occurred. A group of
mastered—absolutely mastered—the rudiments: grammar and syntax, punctuation, diction, sentence variety, paragraph structure, and so forth. It is true that punctuation (for instance) is a subtle art; but its subtlety lies in suspending the rules, as in “You, don’t, know, a god, damned, thing,” or “He’d seen her before, he was sure of it.” No writer should ever have to hesitate for an instant over what the rule to be kept or suspended is. If he wishes, the teacher may deal with the student’s