Meandering Through a Literary Life
Today we’re going to look at the prose of J. M. Coetzee. He is a South African writer and is known for his controversial topics. His 1980 work Waiting for the Barbarians is about a town magistrate that takes on disturbing power by preying on the fears of the people about an incumbent attack by … Read more
I don’t remember how I learned of the existence of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. When it released in English in 2008, it took the literary establishment by storm, winning multiple best book of the year awards. But even so, I’d wager that most people haven’t heard of it. I know I paid attention to these … Read more
Seveneves is a giant sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson. I use the term novel loosely here. It isn’t so much a novel as a history textbook about an event that didn’t happen: the moon exploded. I say this because there isn’t really story or characters in the traditional sense. On the Textbook Style The sense … Read more
Tonal consistency is often overlooked in fantasy writing. Today I’m going to discuss a topic that ranges from extreme, blatant violations to subtle, accidental slip-ups and why they matter. Fantasy Writing The language of fantasy writing is much harder to get right than many “literary fiction” writers give it credit for. In fact, I’d say … Read more
In the previous posts in this series, I’ve taken off with the assumption that most people reading will have a familiarity with the giant novel. This time I’ll start from the basics. Ulysses by James Joyce is one of those books that many people have heard of but probably still can’t tell you much about. … Read more
Although David Foster Wallace is one of my favorite writers of all time, I’ve put off examining his prose until late in this series. I did this on purpose, because the writers we have looked at “follow the rules.” They use clean, minimalist prose. It’s easy to see and articulate why it is good. It’s … Read more
The next giant novel of the year has been taking me quite a bit of time. I’ve chosen The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson, to change things up a bit. It is the first book in a long epic fantasy series. I’ve written about Sanderson’s Mistborn in the past. I didn’t worry about spoilers … Read more
Today we’ll look at some prose from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I couldn’t put this off forever; any series about prose would be remiss to skip Fitzgerald. Many writers these days pop out 120,000-word novels every year. The Great Gatsby clocks in at about 47,000 words and was finely tuned over three years. … Read more
Two weeks ago I wrote about Knapp and Michael’s “Against Theory.” I’ve started going through the book Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism, which is a compilation of all the major papers arguing for/against the points brought up in “Against Theory.” Here’s the main point of Knapp-Michaels, which I never articulated in a … Read more
I went into Moby-Dick with very few preconceptions. The only thing I had heard about it was that there is some chapter on cetology, and everyone finds it too tedious to keep reading. I think this is a poor excuse because it doesn’t occur until Chapter 32 and it isn’t that long. Description in Moby-Dick … Read more