The Story about the Story II: Great Writers Explore Great Literature
David Foster Wallace
(Author)
J. C. Hallman
(Editor)
Description
In the second volume of The Story About the Story, editor J. C. Hallman continues to argue for an alternative to the staid five-paragraph-essay writing that has inoculated so many against the effects of good books. Writers have long approached writing about reading from an intensely personal perspective, incorporating their pasts and their passions into their process of interpretation. Never before collected in a single volume, the many essays Hallman has compiled build on the idea of a "creative criticism," and offers new possibilities for how to write about reading. The Story About the Story Vol. II documents not only an identifiable trend in writing about books that can and should be emulated, it also offers lessons from a remarkable range of celebrated authors that amount to an invaluable course on both how to write and how to read well. Whether they discuss a staple of the canon (Thomas Mann on Leo Tolstoy), the merits of a contemporary (Vivian Gornick on Grace Paley), a pillar of genre-writing (Jane Tompkins on Louis L'Amour), or, arguably, the funniest man on the planet (David Shields on Bill Murray), these essays are by turns poignant, smart, suggestive, intellectual, humorous, sassy, scathing, laudatory, wistful, and hopeful--and above all deeply engaged in a process of careful reading. The essays in The Story About the Story Vol. II chart a trajectory that digs deep into the past and aims toward a future in which literature can play a new and more profound role in how we think, read, live, and write.
Product Details
Price
$18.95
$17.62
Publisher
Tin House Books
Publish Date
September 24, 2013
Pages
325
Dimensions
5.4 X 0.9 X 8.4 inches | 0.79 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781935639688
BISAC Categories:
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In addition to editing "The Story About the Story," J.C. Hallman is the author of several books, including "The Chess Artist," "In Utopia," "Wm & H'ry," and "B & Me: A True Story of Literary Arousal." The list of contributors includes: 1) Wendy Lesser on Cervantes2) Philip Lopate on Stendhal3) John Berryman on Anne Frank4) David Shields on Bill Murray5) Zadie Smith on Hurston F6) Charles Baxter on Chekhov7) Thomas Mann on Tolstoy8) Jane Tompkins on L Amour9) Joyce Carol Oates on Mary Shelley10) Martin Amis on Larkin11) Margaret Atwood on Wells12) Michael Dirda on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 13) Walter Benjamin on Leskov14) Nicholson Baker on Defoe15) James Thurber on James16) Elizabeth Hardwick on Melville17) David Foster Wallace on Updike18) Jacque Barzun on Abraham Lincoln19) Vivian Gornick on Paley20) H.L. Mencken on Dreiser21) Susan Cheever on Alcott22) Ralph Ellison on Crane23) Joseph Conrad on Crane24) Francisco Goldman on Bolano25) Katherine Anne Porter on Cather26) Harold Bloom on Hans Christian Andersen"