How Fiction Works (Tenth Anniversary Edition)

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How Fiction Works (Tenth Anniversary Edition) Page 20

by James Wood


  Will in the World (Greenblatt)

  Wilson, Angus

  Wilson, Edmund

  Wittgenstein, Ludwig

  Wittgenstein, Paul

  Wittgenstein’s Nephew (Bernhard)

  Woolf, Leonard

  Woolf, Virginia

  Dostoevsky’s influence on

  on form

  language of

  on realism

  suicide of

  Wordsworth, William

  The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (Saramago)

  Yeats, William Butler

  Zambra, Alejandro

  ALSO BY JAMES WOOD

  ESSAYS

  The Fun Stuff and Other Essays

  The Nearest Thing to Life

  The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel

  The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief

  FICTION

  The Book Against God

  Upstate

  Additional Praise for How Fiction Works

  An Economist Best Book of the Year

  A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year

  A Library Journal Best Book of the Year

  A San Francisco Chronicle Top 50 Best

  Nonfiction Book of the Year

  “An articulate reminder of the framework that is essential to constructing a lasting work of the imagination.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “Wood’s arranging of source material to prove his points is as fluid and lovely as any great composer’s arrangement of musical notes, and, if nothing else, How Fiction Works will inspire you to simply read more.… [A] lovely, eloquent ode to reading.”

  —The Oregonian

  “This admirable book is, among other things, a successful attempt to replace E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel as an accessible guide to the mechanics of fiction. Without losing sight of its promise to address the common reader rather than the specialist, How Fiction Works is much more sophisticated than Forster’s book.… Wood has thought keenly and profitably about such matters. He also benefits, as Forster did not, from wide reading in contemporary fiction.”

  —Frank Kermode, The New Republic

  “A perceptive and graceful essay, which almost anybody who’s interested in books could read.… Well worth reading.”

  —The Sunday Independent (UK)

  “Highly stimulating stuff—if it doesn’t make you hug your bookcase gratefully, you’re probably an incorrigible ‘formalist-cum-structuralist.’”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Through Wood’s close, mostly loving, frequently funny, occasionally dizzying examination, our reading experience is amplified and enriched.… Wood’s wit and occasional hilarious commentary are well timed and sizzlingly accurate.”

  —Virginia Quarterly Review

  “By examining the minutiae of character, narrative, and style in a range of fictional works that starts with the Bible and ends with Coetzee and Pynchon, he fondly and delicately pieces back together what the deconstructors put asunder.”

  —The Guardian (UK)

  “Serious readers of fiction will tackle this informing and enlightening new work with unrestrained relish.”

  —Library Journal

  About the Author

  James Wood is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a visiting lecturer at Harvard University. He is the author of How Fiction Works, as well as two essay collections, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self, and a novel, The Book Against God. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Edition

  Narrating

  Flaubert and Modern Narrative

  Flaubert and the Rise of the Flaneur

  Detail

  Character

  A Brief History of Consciousness

  Form

  Sympathy and Complexity

  Language

  Dialogue

  Truth, Convention, Realism

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Also by James Wood

  Additional Praise for How Fiction Works

  About the Author

  Copyright

  HOW FICTION WORKS. Copyright © 2008, 2018 by James Wood. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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  Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC, under license from Pan Books Limited.

  For book club information, please visit facebook.com/picadorbookclub or email [email protected].

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the previous Picador edition as follows:

  Wood, James, 1965–

  How fiction works / James Wood. — 1st Picador ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN: 978-0-312-42847-1 (trade paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-4299-0865-8 (ebook)

  1. Fiction—Authorship. 2. Fiction—Technique. 3. Fiction—History and Criticism. I. Title.

  PN3355.W66 2009

  808.3—dc22

  2009001786

  Picador Paperback ISBN 978-1-250-18392-7

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].

  First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First Picador Edition: August 2009

  Second Picador Edition: August 2018

  eISBN 9781429908658

 

 

 


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