The Writer's Reader is an anthology of essays on the art and life of writing by major writers of the past and present.
These essays offer a wealth of insights into how writers approach their craft and represent a practical resource as well as a source of inspiration. The writings collected here range from classic to less well-known, historical to contemporary, and include, for example, essays on the vocation of writing by Natalia Ginzburg, John Berger, Edwidge Danticat, Julia Alvarez, and Flannery O'Connor; thoughts on preparing for writing by Roberto Bolaño, Henry Miller, Jorge Luis Borges, Ha Jin, and Cynthia Ozick; and essays on the craft of writing by authors such as Italo Calvino, Colm Tóibín, Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth, Lydia Davis, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith.
Taken together, this collection is a must-read for any student or devotee of writing.
Robert Cohen is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist, and is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College, USA. His books include Inspired Sleep, Amateur Barbarians, and The Varieties of Romantic Experience, and his stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Paris Review, The Atlantic, GQ, and The Believer, and many other magazines. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a Lila Wallace Writers Award, and a Pushcart Prize.
Jay Parini is a poet, novelist, and biographer, author of The Last Station, which was made into an Academy Award-nominated film in 2009, and Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College, USA. His novels and biographies (Steinbeck, Frost, Faulkner) have been translated into over thirty languages. He has edited many books, including the Norton Anthology of American Autobiography, The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. He is a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, CNN, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He has also written for GQ, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and Salon.com.
I. Vocation
Introduction
“Writing in the Cold: The First Ten Years” Ted Solotaroff
“My Vocation” Natalia Ginzburg
“Why Write? The Writer-to-Be” Walter Abish
“Silences” Tillie Olsen
“Letter to A Young Gentleman Who Proposes To Embrace the Career of Art” Robert Louis Stevenson
“The Nature and Aim of Fiction” Flannery O'Connor
“On Becoming a Writer” Ralph Ellison
“Advice to a Young Writer” Danilo Kis
“The Writer and His Community” Chinua Achebe
“Perchance to Dream” Jonathan Franzen
“The Storyteller” John Berger
“How to Become a Writer” Lorrie Moore
“Words Into Fiction” Eudora Welty
“Create Dangerously” Edwidge Danticat
II. Preparation
Introduction
“Unpacking My Library” Walter Benjamin
“Reading In the Toilet” Henry Miller
“My First Speech” Katherine Anne Porter
“Reading and Writing” V.S. Naipaul
“The Sealed Treasure” Saul Bellow
“Literary Pleasure” Jorge Luis Borges
“Of Books” Montaigne
“On Influence” Raymond Carver
“On Keeping a Notebook” Joan Didion
“The Lesson of the Master” Cynthia Ozick
“Reading Blind” Margaret Atwood
“Deciding to Write in English” Ha Jin
“Approaches to What?” Georges Perec
“Who Would Dare?” Roberto Bolano
III. Creation
Introduction
“Not Knowing” Donald Barthelme
“The Novelist's Voice” Rebecca West
“Levels of Reality in Literature” Italo Calvino
“The Novel Demeuble” Willa Cather
“The Personal and the Individual” Leonard Michaels
“Writing American Fiction” Philip Roth
“Literature and Memory” Ivan Klima
“Character in Fiction” Virginia Woolf
“The Art of Fiction” Henry James
“Form as a Response to Doubt” Lydia Davis
“How Not to Write About Africa” Binavanga Wainaina
“The Nature of the Fun” David Foster Wallace
“Failbetter” Zadie Smith
Notes on the authors
Other versions by this Author