A thought-provoking journey inside the minds of the world’s most accomplished storytellers, from Shakespeare to Stephen KingNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SPECTATOR • “Richard Cohen’s book acted as a tonic to me. It didn’t make me more Russian, but it fired up my imagination. I have never annotated a book so fiercely.”—Hilary Mantel“There are three rules for writing a novel,” … are three rules for writing a novel,” Somerset Maugham is said to have said. “Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” How then to bring characters to life, find a voice, kill your darlings, or run that most challenging of literary gauntlets, writing a sex scene? What made Nabokov choose the name Lolita? Why did Fitzgerald use firstperson narration in The Great Gatsby ? How did Kerouac, who raged against revision, finally come to revise On the Road ?
Veteran editor and author Richard Cohen takes us on an engrossing journey into the lives and minds of the world’s greatest writers, from Honoré de Balzac and George Eliot to Virginia Woolf and Zadie Smith—with a few mischievous detours to visit Tolstoy along the way. In a scintillating tour d’horizon, Cohen lays bare the tricks, motivations, and techniques of the literary greats, revealing their obsessions and flaws and how we can learn from them along the way.
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Every reader will enjoy this ‘look under the hood’ of the craft of writing. Cohen’s quotes, examples and anecdotes bring this to full song; you will learn something.
I’m a fan of books about writing. I can’t explain why they fascinate me so much but they tend to make me less lonely as a writer. The really good ones do anyway. They remind me perseverance in writing can heed staying results. To write well, you must first write badly, etc. So when a book like this comes along (the title was enough to hook me, though this isn’t a book about writing like Tolstoy as much as it’s a book about writing as well as Tolstoy, essentially), I have to take a peek.
I don’t know if I can express how well this project is put together. Cohen has compiled some terrific examples, and he’s found a way to weave them seamlessly throughout his narrative. His book is informative, with chapters on openings, endings, revisions, sex, and everything in-between, but also it’s an effortless read, which means it’s not only well written but meticulously so.
I couldn’t put this one down. I never got bored — even when he revisited well known anecdotes and advice — because this one is packed all the way through. It’s a clever book, a fun read, and a useful text. My copy was from the library, so I’ll have to buy it. There’s too much good stuff not to fill in the margins. I was itching to pick up my pencil and mark it up.
Cohen peels back a curtain, then opens the window behind it, then leads you out onto the fire escape to where the not-so-mainstream tidbits rest. For instance, his section on irony has you thinking about it in new ways. He discusses the things that get left out, using Salinger’s bananafish and Paolo Maurensig’s “The Lüneburg Variation” to make his points. The result for me was eye opening.
Perhaps that’s it. Like all good books about writing, Cohen uses literature to make his points. He doesn’t give you banal directives, but shows you not only what works, but how it does, letting you think it to pieces. His literary selections are curated with the eye (or perhaps the heart) of a bibliophile, and he’s found a way to bring current fiction (think Fifty Shades of Grey, though it’s only mentioned in a footnote) in conversation with the really, really old stuff (think Greek and Egyptian). He’s also chosen the best example in each case to serve his point. This is a talent in itself.
But what’s most appealing about the read is that he reveals the mind of the writer, which must be attributed to his experience as an editor. It’s refreshing to read about the collaboration involved, the ways in which writers not only interact with editors and other writers, but their readers as well. The novel is not often thought of as a collective experience, and yet it most certainly is. I look forward to reading this one a second time, with my pencil poised and ready.