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Any collection of essays by fine writers on the art of writing is guaranteed to be
varied, highly idiosyncratic, totally personal and of great interest to the layman reader.
This collection of 41 such pieces is all of those things --- but it could have been a
whole lot more. There are plenty of quotable bits here and a number of essays that hold up
entirely; but the opportunity to make this a truly coherent and consistent collection of
essays on the craft of writing has been regrettably missed.
On the varsity A-team of famous writers included, we find such names as Bellow, Doctorow,
Oates, Saroyan, Updike, Vonnegut, Walker, and Wiesel. There is a good "bench" of
lesser-known but still prominent writers (Louise Erdrich, Thomas Fleming, Ward Just,
Barbara Kingsolver, Sara Paretsky, Annie Proulx, Hilma Wolitzer) --- and a number of other
names that were frankly unfamiliar, at least to this reviewer. Predictably, there is no
absolute correlation between the fame of the author and the quality of the essay. Joyce
Carol Oates is delightful on the benefits of running to her literary life, but William
Saroyan (represented by an excerpt from his last manuscript) is disappointing. Alice
Hoffman is eloquent on her cancer diagnosis and its effect on her life; John Updike
(writing in the persona of his famous character Henry Bech) is clever but inconsequential.
There are worthwhile contributions from Annie Proulx, James Salter, and Carl Hiaasen,
among others. Barbara Kingsolver is delightful on the question of writing an
"unchaste" novel, and Louise Erdrich delves into the language of her American
Indian forbears with great insight. No one, alas, comes close to matching the impact of my
own personal favorite quotation from a fine writer about writing. As W. Somerset Maugham
said, "There are three rules for writing a good novel. Unfortunately, no one knows
what they are."
The collection is weakened, however, by some omissions that might have been very easily
rectified. There is no explanation that these pieces are drawn from the New York Times
Sunday Book Review, the primary show window of American literary commentary. They are
not dated; instead the writers are merely presented in alphabetical order, a curious and
unsatisfactory tactic. Noting the dates of publication would have set these pieces more
firmly into the literary landscape. The space limitations imposed by the Book Review
publication, as well as the nature of the Book Review's reading audience, were
certainly a factor in how these writers approached their task. Readers of the collection
should have that information.
A line or two of introductory biographical data on each writer might also have been
helpful. John Darnton, culture editor of the Times, does little to set the scene
meaningfully in his preface. And the selection of writers is skewed exclusively toward
fiction writers; even those like Thomas Fleming, who have done significant work in
nonfiction, reflect here only on the craft of fiction. Do not historians, biographers, and
social critics count as writers who might have something interesting to say about writing?
So you can enjoy much that is contained in this bag of literary potato chips. But the
flavor is a tad monotonous and the packaging unimaginative.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)
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