Advice for the Experienced Writer Long, Priscilla (2010). The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life. Seattle, WA: Wallingford Press, 349 pp. My shelves are heavy with how-to-write books, some helpful, some inspirational, most inert. … Continue reading
Not A Waste of Time Silber, Joan (2009). The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as it Takes. Minneapolis, MN: Greywolf Press, 114pp. I bought this book on the recommendation of a writing instructor when I was having … Continue reading
A Smelly Book Suskind, Patrick (1986). Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. New York: Vintage. (Translated from the German by John E. Woods.) It’s difficult to conceptualize smells and to describe their essence in writing. Even familiar smells, like coffee … Continue reading
Bums with Feelings Kennedy, William (1983). Ironweed. New York: Penguin, 225 pp. This beautifully written novel is a character study of homeless alcoholics in Albany during the depression. Sounds depressing, but it isn’t, because the characters are so alive and … Continue reading
The Novel That Didn’t Know When to Stop Shacochis, Bob (2013). The Woman Who Lost Her Soul. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 713 pp. I’d characterize this as a spy thriller, in the camp of LeCarre, perhaps, although unlike LeCarre, … Continue reading
All The Insight of a Rabbit Updike, John (1960). Rabbit, Run. New York: Random House, 264 pp. This is the first of the “Rabbit” tetralogy, and the book that established Updike as one of the greatest American novelists (and won … Continue reading
Rushdie, Salman (1990). Haroun and the Sea of Stories. London: Granta Books. 212 pp. A Fantastic Essay on Writing This is perhaps Rushdie’s most accessible book, ostensibly a children’s fairy tale, set in a fantasy world far away. An Indian … Continue reading
Wright, Stephen (994). Going Native. New York: Dell Publishing. Writing For the Sake of Writing This widely praised novel is more like a collection of very loosely connected short stories. The writing is interesting, some of the sentences hallucinatory. That’s … Continue reading
Life’s Three Great Pleasures Considered Nickles, Sara, & Shacochis, Bob (Eds.) (1994) Drinking, Smoking, & Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. 200 pp. This anthology of stories, essays, and poems (many of them excerpts from larger works) recalls a time … Continue reading
Wacky People Doing Wacky Things Toole, John Kennedy (1980) A Confederacy of Dunces. New York: Grove Press. The main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is a modern-day Don Quixote, a manic, tragi-comic, delusional soul who believes, or at least pretends, that … Continue reading