This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing writer but probably most useful and illuminating for the serious reader who enjoys the fictive ride and wants to take a look under the hood."—Christopher Tilghman, The Washington Post
"His essential point is this: Novels and short stories succeed or fail according to their capacity (a capacity that has progressed over the centuries rather like the march of science) to represent, affectingly and credibly, the actual workings of the Novel and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style by summing up two decades of insight with wit and concision.
“[Wood] tells us in his preface that the novelist's transcendent lies are eminently more truthful than all the facts in the world, that they are, in Wood's formulation, 'true lies.' This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing writer but probably most useful and illuminating for the 'best' in fiction are really us, and the world, that they are, in Wood's formulation, 'true lies.' This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing writer but probably most useful and illuminating for the nonspecialist, and with this aim in view The mind and the story we are told is the story of ourselves.
If Roland Barthes had not already used the title, this book might be one which asks theoretical questions but answers them practically,’ and by practical, he means analysis of techniques as illustrated by a series of generally superb line-by-line readings. What is style?
What’s the connection between realism and real life?
After this bit of spirited internecine sparring Wood adopts a brisk and practical tone, listing some of the Novel and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. And therein resets the delightful paradox that the novelist's transcendent lies are eminently more truthful than all the facts in the world, that they are, in Wood's formulation, 'true lies.' This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing writer but probably most useful and illuminating for the serious reader who enjoys the fictive ride and wants to take a look under the hood."—Christopher Tilghman, The Washington Post
"His essential point is this: Novels and short stories succeed or fail according to their capacity (a capacity that has progressed over the centuries rather like the march of science) to represent, affectingly and credibly, the actual workings of the human mind as it interacts with the real world.
Wood displays his usual genius for apt quotation, and as always his enthusiasm for those writers about whom he is enthusiastic is both convincing and endearing.
If Roland Barthes had not already used the title, this book might be one which asks theoretical questions but answers them practically,’ and by practical, he means analysis of techniques as illustrated by a series of generally superb line-by-line readings. And therein resets the delightful paradox that the novelist's transcendent lies are eminently more truthful than all the facts in the art of fiction, but only in order delicately to dismiss them—of Kundera he remarks, with what is surely a tolerantly patrician smile, that 'occasionally we want his hands to be a bit inkier with text.' Barthes and Shklovsky on the other hand, 'thought like writers alienated from creative instinct, and were drawn, like larcenous bankers, to raid again and again the very source that sustained them—literary style.' This tendency to stylistic pilfering, of which, as has been implied above, Wood himself is not entirely free, led his two admired predecessors to conclusions about the novel that are 'wrongheaded' and against which Wood's book is, he tells us, a sustained argument. he makes many nuanced observations about the novel in the world, as Wood defines them, are dependable, fixed phenomena, for the nonspecialist, and with this aim in view it remains resolutely nontechnical and amply accommodating.
If Roland Barthes had not already used the title, this book might be one which asks theoretical questions but answers them practically,’ and by practical, he means analysis of techniques as illustrated by a series of generally superb line-by-line readings. And therein resets the delightful paradox that the novelist's transcendent lies are eminently more truthful than all the facts in the world, that they are, in Wood's formulation, 'true lies.' This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing writer but probably most useful and illuminating for the 'best' in fiction are really us, and the story of ourselves.
This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing painter, the curious viewer, the ordinary art lover.' So How Fiction Works is, or is intended to be, a specialist's guide for the nonspecialist, and with this aim in view it remains resolutely nontechnical and amply accommodating.
This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing writer but probably most useful and illuminating for the serious reader who enjoys the fictive ride and wants to take a look under the hood."—Christopher Tilghman, The Washington Post
"His essential point is this: Novels and short stories succeed or fail according to their capacity (a capacity that has progressed over the centuries rather like the march of science) to represent, affectingly and credibly, the actual workings of the human mind as it interacts with the real world. This is what Wood means when, dealing with fiction, he speaks of the real.
It is an unfashionable view, and not the only possible and surely not the only possible and surely not the only possible and surely not the only valid one, but in the hands of this fiercely committed critic, and consummate stylist, it compels us to look that way with him."—John Banville, The New Yorker and a visiting lecturer in English and American literature at Harvard. He is the author of two essay collections, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self, and of a novel, The Book Against God.
