| The Story about the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature Contributor(s): Hallman, J. C. (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0980243696 ISBN-13: 9780980243697 Publisher: Tin House Books OUR PRICE: $17.06 Product Type: Paperback Published: September 2009 Annotation: Writers and critics have always approached writing about reading differently. Most people are familiar with the latter group, which churns out stifling essays telling readers what to think, but rarely "why." Editor J.C. Hallman suggests an alternative: the writers' methodology. Writers come at the subject from an intensely personal perspective, incorporating their pasts and passions into the process of interpretation. In the pieces Hallman compiles here, some of the most important writers ever to live ponder some of the greatest books ever written. The essays are by turns funny, smart, suggestive, scathing, laudatory, poignant, and hopeful, and above all, deeply engaged in a process of careful reading. Together, they chart a trajectory that digs deep into the past and aims toward a future in which literature can play a new and more profound role in how we think, read, live, and write. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Collections | Essays |
| Dewey: 809 |
| LCCN: 2009015717 |
| Physical Information: 1.4" H x 5.4" W x 8.2" (1.05 lbs) 420 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Editor J. C. Hallman has pored through countless collected essays of notable authors, searching for pieces in which the author approaches literature from a personal angle. The results are a fantastic, provocative, intelligent, and, at times, hilarious discussion of literature and life. Never before collected in a single volume, the essays in The Story About the Story feature lively discussions of great literature by some of the most prominent authors of all time. With over thirty essays written by authors as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf to Cynthia Ozick and Salman Rushdie, this collection offers an invaluable course on literature as well as a look into "Creative Criticism," a form of critical essay that involves a personal perspective. Writers such as William Gass, Wallace Stegner, Albert Camus, Milan Kundera, Susan Sontag, James Wood, E. B. White, Herman Hesse, Cynthia Ozick, Walter Kirn, and Michael Chabon discuss the work of such luminaries as Marcel Proust, J. D. Salinger, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Malcolm Lowry, T. S. Eliot, Anton Chekhov, Robert Lowell, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry David Thoreau, Cormac McCarthy, Truman Capote, and John Steinbeck. |
Contributor Bio(s): Hallman, J. C.: - J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to editing The Story About the Story, he is also the author of several books, including The Chess Artist, In Utopia, Wm & H'ry, and B & Me: A True Story of Literary Arousal. |