The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work : A Collection from the Washington Post Book World

Book Description

A dazzling collection of essays in which today's most celebrated writers explore their personal relationships with the literary life.

Featuring a gathering of more than fifty of contemporary literature's finest voices, this volume will enchant, move, and inspire readers with its tales of The Writing Life. In it, authors divulge professional secrets: how they first discovered they were writers, how they work, how they deal with the myriad frustrations and delights a writer's life affords. Culled from ten years of the distinguished Washington Post column of the same name, The Writing Life highlights an eclectic group of luminaries who have wildly varied stories to tell, but who share this singularly beguiling career. Here are their pleasures as well as their peeves; revelations of their deepest fears; dramas of triumphs and failures; insights into the demands and rewards.

Each piece is accompanied by a brief and vivid biography of the writer by Washington Post Book World editor Marie Arana who also provides an introduction to the collection. The result is a rare view from the inside: a close examination of writers' concerns about the creative process and the place of literature in America. For anyone interested in the making of fiction and nonfiction, here is a fascinating vantage on the writer's world--an indispensable guide to the craft.

Customer Reviews:

Average for the Genre. .......2007-02-11

I agree that one can find writing inspiration in these pages. Studying the mechanics and practices of other writers is always enjoyable and enlightening. Sometimes one can find tricks and short cuts to emulate which then enhance one's own work, and that is certainly the case with The Writing Life. The problem that I had with it is due to its selection bias. In my opinion, it chronicled far too many journalists as opposed to outstanding writers. Many of the individuals are not people one considers to be luminaries at all. I picked up The Paris Review's Interviews book which is more satisfying in this regard. Obviously though, this text isn't devoid of value, but it depends on what you wish to use it for.

Get the Story Behind the Writer.......2006-09-05

This is an excellent compilation of writers and a bit of their story. I know that other reviewer's recommended this book for writers, but Ido not consider myself a writer in professional terms, and I still found it facinating.

Arana provides a backhistory of each writer introducing them, and then each author tells some aspect of how they handle the writing life. I enjoy being able to get "behind the scenes" and understand how a writer approaches their day...where they write, do they use a computer, etc. As she says in her introduction, she invited "seasoned writers to mull the craft" of their writing.

More Than Meets the Eye.......2005-10-13

I love reading other authors' takes on "the writing life" and how they cope with or find inspiration from daily life to continue nurturing their creativity, motivation, and changing goals. This book surprised me with an extremely varied mix of writing advice and insight.

From dealing with publishers and the importance of self-marketing to dealing with the slack you get for your chosen genre not being as academically accepted or how to maintain a personal life along with your career...the authors in this collection cover it all. There's enough here to touch on any aspect of writing you may be dealing with or thinking about and will, no doubt, include many surprises you haven't realized you do need more information about.

Reading the collection introduced me to new authors, some with writing styles I fell in love with and intend to read more from, and made me think about so many aspects of the art of writing that I've since realized keys for improving my own novel and new directions I want to go in in my own career.

This is the perfect gift for any writer you know...even if you have no idea what their own writing style or interests are. You'll make a better writer of them.

Great Anthology of Writers..........2005-09-04

Over the years, I've read 'The Writing Life' segment found in many a Washington Post "Book World" section. Last spring, a writing instructor assigned Arana's collection of these articles for our outside class reading. I was pleased to find many of the articles I had previously enjoyed plus plenty I had not read combined in one volume, thus allowing me to purge the accordian file folder where I store such items.

Arana has selected some of the best pieces for her volume, and prefaced each with a short introduction of the author. In some cases I reread segments by favorite authors, and in other cases I had never read the author.

One author I've been meaning to try is Barbara Mertz. Haven't heard of her? She writes under the pen name Elizabeth Peters, and is the author of the the tales of the exploits of Amelia Peabody-Emerson, archeologist and sleuth. Now, I had thought about reading Peters, but had not done so because I have been trying to curb a hopeless addiction to mysteries and force myself to read things that "improved my mind." Peters, i.e. Mertz, says at age 60, she figures her mind "is about as good as it's going to get" and that statement and others she wrote made me laugh. Being from a long line of folks suffering from a bad case of the "Protestant ethic" I've always needed permission to have fun, and now that I am 63 I have it.

I read my first Peters novel (reviewed elsewhere) and ordered 6-7 more. Is this frivoluous, you bet. Will I keep it up, Hopefully!!

Elegant, Exquisite, Eclectic.......2004-09-27

Arana bundles a life tapestry of professional experience, formal education, and school of hard knocks, in a motif of a writer's existence. This work is much more than just a mere compilation of WP Book World excerpts. Clearly, significant thought was devoted to the selection of her WP articles along with fundamentally pragmatic insights that are certain to be invaluable to anyone interested in the profession of writing or editing.

The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (Oxford Books of Prose & Verse)

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For being writers ...
The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes
We're in the room as literary history is made

The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (Oxford Books of Prose & Verse)

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0192804685

Book Description

An unrivalled collection of literary gossip and intimate sidelights on the lives of the authors The dictionary defines an anecdote as 'a short account of an entertaining or interesting incident', and the anecdotes in this collection more than live up to that description. Many of them are funny, often explosively so. Others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers in the English-speaking world from Chaucer to the present acting both unpredictably, and deeply in character. The range is wide - this is a book which finds room for Milton and Margaret Atwood, George Eliot and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Ian Fleming, Brendan Behan and Wittgenstein. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star left a haunting account of Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of Hercule Poirot - a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

Customer Reviews:

For being writers ..........2007-06-05

I paid roughly half price for this book and thought it a complete waste of money ... and if time is money, I also have to admit I spent too much time trying to glean something interesting in it. However, at $6 I'm admittedly more apt to rationalize 'why not' and forgo my next cup o' (high end) crappuccino. ... O.K. there were a few 'good' retorts (whatever), but (trust me) you get infinitely more from The Author's writings. ... I'm beginning to think any book blessed with Oxford or Cambridge in the title is going to be a sefl-fullfilling prophesy of Disappointment. Personally, I'm convinced if you want a piece of a writer, read their writing.

The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes.......2006-11-05

This book is more a reference book then something readable but it does have its moments. If you have a few minutes to kill and are looking for something a little light and amusing this book may fit the bill.

We're in the room as literary history is made.......2006-07-17

Civilians like to imagine that writers talk about writing when they get together. I'm sure, in all of literary history, that has happened several times. But it is not a favorite subject. Sex is. As is Food. Travel. Money. The perfidy of rivals. And did I say money?

Those are ordinary topics. But that doesn't mean we have nothing to gain from hearing what writers have to say about them. These are writers, remember? They're at the most clever when they're envious, scornful or otherwise out of sorts.

John Gross, editor of this anthology, is a particularly witty example of the breed. I stood by him at a party once, and, though I am said to be not entirely dull, I remained mute for a good twenty minutes. Gross spoke in epigrams. He could go lofty or vulgar. He was wise and wicked, and, most of all, funny. No surprise that he has edited a book with those same qualities.

Anecdotes are compressed stories, the more compressed the better. Like this one, about the dictionary-maker and moralist Samuel Johnson: "A young fellow, lamenting one day that he had lost all his Greek --- Johnson retorted, 'I believe it happened at the same time that I lost my large estate in Yorkshire.'"

I was amused to read about William Blake and his wife, sitting in their summer house, naked: "Come in," cried Blake. "It's only Adam and Eve, you know!"

And here's a trivia question. What lines did William Wordsworth write before forking manure into his garden? The opening stanza of the Immortality Ode:

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light
The glory and the freshness of a dream...

Do you know Jane Austen's last words? "I want nothing but death."

Here we look over the shoulder of John Keats as he coughs up the first drop of blood --- and knows exactly what it means. We hear Ralph Waldo Emerson dismiss Edgar Allen Poe as "the jingle man." We watch Anthony Trollope chow down and explain that he doesn't have a good appetite, he's just "very greedy."

Oscar Wilde pays a visit to Walt Whitman. Wilkie Collins confesses a drug habit. Emily Dickinson exhausts a visitor. Lewis Carroll plays dumb. At a party given by a Duchess, Henry James describes himself as a hermit. Arthur Conan Doyle demonstrates how to make a holy man jealous. George Bernard Shaw reveals the source of his skepticism. A drama critic falls asleep --- and on his face. Another poet pours a beer over Robert Frost's head. Sinclair Lewis brags about his new book.

As we reach the Twentieth Century, the anecdotes turn more political. Ludwig Wittgenstein gives his money away to his rich relatives, on the theory that they can't be further corrupted by it. Vladimir Nabokov has a violent reaction to anti-Semitism. A Communist sympathizer tells George Orwell: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs," causing Orwell to reply, "Where's the omelette?" Samuel Beckett gives his jacket to a tramp --- without emptying the pockets. W.H. Auden contemplates the death penalty for Brecht.

There are more Brits than Americans, which seems just. It also makes the book a better gift for English majors than for civilian readers. On the other hand, the last anecdote in the book is about J.K. Rowling --- scholarly this ain't.

The idea reader of this book: the lover of books with snooty friends. Read this, pen in hand, and you'll have more than enough ammo to dazzle your listeners at high-minded parties. Any writer quoted in these pages would understand that motive.

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Very Helpful
Second only to "Ulysses Annotated"
Second only to "Ulysses Annotated"
Indispensible for Joyce scholars
I feel a strong weakness for the book

Allusions in Ulysses: An Annotated List
Weldon Thornton
Manufacturer: University of N. Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807840890

Customer Reviews:

Very Helpful.......2004-08-14

For those who want to understand some of the apparent oddities in the text. This book does not tell you what's going on, but clarifies where certain words and phrases come from (music hall songs, philosophy texts, political campaigns, etc.) that a modern reader or even non-scholar would have no idea of. Of all the companion books to Ulysses I'm familiar with this is the most useful for actively reading the pages themselves.

Second only to "Ulysses Annotated".......2001-10-09

I recommend "Ulysses Annotated" before I recommend this one to fans of Joyce's great novel "Ulysses." However, as an aid, this book is highly readable and is less encyclopedic than "Ulysses Annotated," which covers more ground, as is its nature. So, buy "Ulysses," "Ulysses Annotated," and then "Allusions in Ulysses," in that order, and you should be set for life. Long life and success to Joyce and his followers!

Second only to "Ulysses Annotated".......2001-10-09

Indispensible for Joyce scholars.......2001-06-06

Pay no attention to the negative review above. If you are looking for an apparatus to use in reading Ulysses, this book and Harry Blamires' Bloomsday Book are the best available. Neither seeks to use Joyce's text to advance its own agenda, but rather to explicate the text, which is difficult going for a new reader, but worth the effort. Whereas Blamires summarizes each chapter of Joyce in his book, this is a page by page list of Joycean allusions, permitting more back and forth shuttling between the apparatus and Ulysses. If you are looking for a guide for students, I would prefer Blamires for younger undergrads who might not be able to follow what is happening in Joyce without summaries, and this one for more advanced students and scholars.

I feel a strong weakness for the book.......2000-06-03

This book is extremly hard to decipher. I feel the book is patterned after Homer's THE ODYSSEY.

Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies)

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Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies)
Gregory Castle
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0631210059

Book Description

This ground-breaking collection of postcolonial discourses takes a region-by-region approach to postcolonial theory, giving a sense of the heterogeneity of postcolonial studies.The development of postcolonial studies is inextricably tied to specific geographical, social, and historical conditions. Gregory Castle's regional approach emphasizes the separate development of different theories, but also enables students to compare different colonial problems and the various postcolonial theoretical solutions that have evolved in different regions.In order to give students a fuller sense of the themes and issues specific to different regions, the anthology includes essays in their entirety. An introductory section includes recent essays by seminal thinkers like Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Edward Said. Five sections follow that give coverage to post-colonial thought in South Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and Ireland. In each of these sections, issues central to the development of postcolonial thought and its relation to colonial discourse are featured in essays by some of the most important scholars writing today.A general introduction provides the student with an overview of the issues covered in the anthology, detailing how different regions respond to the British Empire and its legacy in the post-colonial world. Though these responses spring from different kinds of problems, they are directed toward the same source of power. The continuities between and among these responses, which are detailed in headnotes for each entry, justify the existence of the so-called postcolonial moment.

As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002

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The postscripts were a fab idea
600 pages of engaging the reader
A mixed collection
As for me

As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002
Clive James
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0393051803

Book Description

It is impossible not to be awed by the remarkable range and massive erudition of Clive James, one of the greatest literary critics of our age. In the tradition of Edmund Wilson, James is a brilliant stylist so perceptive (and funny) that he renders the twisted literary terrain of the twentieth century remarkably accessible. In As of This Writing James has assembled his most ambitious and expansive collection to date, a book that features forty-nine essays on poetry, film, culture, and fiction written between 1967 and 2001. Whether commenting on poets like Auden or Jarrell, novelists like D. H. Lawrence and James Agee (not to mention Judith Krantz), or filmmakers like Fellini or Bogdanovich, James delights his readers with his manic energy and critical aplomb. This volume is a literary education that few recent books can rival.

Customer Reviews:

The postscripts were a fab idea.......2005-04-27

Clive James repeatedly asked: why did Primo Levi kill himself? I guess it never occurred to Clive that the simple pain of old age is enough to make anyone suicidal. Healthy youngish people always reveal their fatuous ignorance whenever they express shock about the suicidal tendencies of old people. Wondering why people kill themselves is a knee-jerk butt-backward approach. The real question you should be asking is: why *don't* people kill themselves? Clive finally turns realistic when he says: "For all we know, suicide is the mandatory escape route for anyone with clear sight, and the rest of us get to die in bed only because we have the gift of regrowing our cataracts from day to day."

600 pages of engaging the reader.......2003-12-15

Wow, this is a long one, but it holds one's interest. At least, it held mine most of the time. Also, being a collection of 35 years of essays, it's possible to pick and choose. I mean, it's not like you have to read from p. 1 to p. 600 without a break. Clive James is a critic, one who writes for the NY and London Reviews of Books, the New Yorker, etc., etc. he's made a name for himself by becoming one of the central voices of literary criticism, and this collection of his essays shows how and why he's become the icon of our times. It's a keeper.

A mixed collection.......2003-12-10

James gets three stars for having a good lively prose style and for penning a very good essay on Nixon instead of the one star warranted by the crudity of his views about poets. The worst parts of this book are the little afterwards he writes to his essays, in which he often puffs up his chest with pride at the critical establishment's supposedly coming around to his views, as if that makes any difference to any position's actual merit (or indicates how such opinions might ultimately change). James too often just writes about larger literary figures, superficially examining or recycling prevelant views, and has little to say about anyone a thousand more in-depth essays haven't been written about alreadly. He perpetuates the English academic's grotesque overestimation of that dated period poet W.S. Auden and attacks Theodore Roethke--a poet so beyond Auden it's almost laughable--so it's a disgrace when James dismisses Roethke as an Auden imitator. He may be right that Roethke DID imitate parts of Auden and others, but the fact that he took whatever techniques he learned from other poets, enlivened them and developed them farther than their originals ought not to escape the notice of an intelligent reviewer. That Roethke didn't stagnate and decline like Auden or Lowell, but changed and developed, often radically, is evidence for James that Roethke was a mere imitator. In other words, it's pure and shallow bunk. His essay on Heaney is good, if a bit fawining and unoriginal, and it's diminished somewhat by the familiar self-congratulations in the post-script. The Nixon stuff, however, actually does present an original and thoughtful perspective on a topic many have preconceived notions about--exactly what we want from an intelligent essayist--so it's definitely worth a read.

As for me.......2003-09-06

I thought this book was a wonderful collection of brilliant essays. I am very impressed with his range of subjects and feel inlightened by them.

This book features forty- nine essays on poetry, film, fiction, and criticism from his writings between 1968 and 2002. many with a up to date Postscript.

Book Description

A glorious sampling of art and literature that celebrates the timeless bond between mother and child. Beautifully produced with a silk ribbon marker, scented endpapers and a handsome slipcase, Mother and Child is the perfect gift for Mothers Day, baby showers, and mothers' birthdays throughout the year. 70 full-color illustrations.

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

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Luminous and Illuminating
some books just make you smart
The pen is mightier than the sword...
Brimful of brilliant!
Negotiating with the writer

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
Margaret Atwood
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521662605

Amazon.com

After having been through the "wash-and-spin cycle" a few times, Margaret Atwood realized that her "own experience in the suds may be relevant to others." Thus was born Negotiating with the Dead, six essays about what it means to be a writer, particularly a female writer. Each essay explores one aspect of writerly contemplation: art vs. commerce; the ideal reader; the separation between the part of a person that writes and the part that lives; and, as the title suggests, the constant presence of those who came before (both writers and other ancestors). Atwood relates her own experiences as a female poet (to be taken seriously, it would have helped to commit suicide) and as a bestselling novelist (whether your books are good or bad, sell well or don't, people will look down at you for it). These are intriguing meditations, with references to works by Virgil, Isak Dinesen, Robertson Davies, and countless others (Atwood's own dead, no doubt). --Jane Steinberg

Book Description

What is the role of the Writer? Prophet? High Priest of Art? Court Jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain--or excuse!--their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift? Atwood's wide reference to other writers, living and dead, is balanced by anecdotes from her own experiences, both in Canada and elsewhere. The lightness of her touch is offset by a seriousness about the purpose and the pleasures of writing, and by a deep familiarity with the myths and traditions of western literature. Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Quebec, Ontario, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College. Throughout her thirty years of writing, Atwood has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. Hew newest novel, The Blind Assassin, won the 2000 Booker Prize for Fiction. She is the author of more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include Alias Grace (1996), The Robber Bride (1994), Cat's Eye (1988), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), Surfacing (1972) and The Edible Woman (1970). Acclaimed for her talent for portraying both personal lives and worldly problems of universal concern, Atwood's work has been published in more than thirty-five languages, including Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic, and Estonian.

Customer Reviews:

Luminous and Illuminating.......2006-11-29

Perhaps the greatest book ever written on the creative process. A treat for writers and non writers alike. Illuminating and inspiring for everyone, you do not need to be an Atwood afficionado to appreciate this. Lovers of words will find themselves, as always, entranced by Ms Atwood's prose. A yummy confection that will stimulate your mind and gobsmack you with its content and style. This is a book which will have you reading and rereading time and time again, scouring for that quotation or thought. A delightful tour inside the mind of a creative genius!

some books just make you smart.......2006-10-30

so, some books just make you smart. just like some people can't help but be smart. one such person, who demonstrates her intelligence through authorship, is margaret atwood. margaret atwood, who's literary acquaintance i made first nearly 15 years ago, when my mentor, an artist in la, esther raucher, was reading cat's eye in a book group she was in. margaret atwood is one brilliant woman, with profound insight, and professional respect for her craft. this book is a testimony to that respect--and offers even those every day writers, with miles of published accomplishments (like atwood herself) the whys and wherefores that remind you what you do, why it's important, and why it's impossible, if you're really a writer, to do anything else.

Negotiating with the Dead, who's title lept out at me in my present mood, began it's life as a series of lectures put on by Cambridge University--so i guess it helps that she's smart. the book has all the stuff of university writing. it has quotes and notes, introductions and acknowledgments, a bibliography that makes a stunning reading list, and 180 pages of writer insight. While remaining easy to read, the reader is made smarter through the references atwood uses, the juxtaposition of writers she quotes, the notes she adds and the ideas, wholly her own, that inform the organization of her insight. this book makes you smarter. you can feel it as your eyes scan the page.

Having read only atwood's poetry before, i was astounded by her sentences, paragraphs and pages. while guiding me carefully, i felt included in her insights. she was talking to her peers. she was inclusive and revealing. she invited us into her inner dichotomies of thought and longing. throughout this book, she helps us try on the ideas of orientation, duplicity, dedication, temptation, communion and descent. she asks us and answers herself with research, study and still no answer. she invites us further into the mystery of writer and written word, humanity and tale telling. she takes us on a guided tour of a labyrinth, who's only way out is to write one.

contemplating who we do it for, i was moved to tears by atwood's story of her secret society--the revelation that it was brownies and brown owl, the leader, the mentor, the teacher in cat's eye (a book i have not read--but my esther has and was all those years ago), was the first reader atwood wrote for. i was moved--maybe because of hormones or grief, but tears came to my eyes and a cry caught in my chest for the beauty of her story--and her love for her beloved brown owl--her first reader. and it is in this contemplation and discussion, i lingered longest. "for myself" has been my answer forever--but my longings and adventures have been vain attempts to find a community of peers. this section of atwood's book brought me back to the randomness of brown owl and other such figures, who feature for a moment in real life--a moment significant and memorable enough, to keep you doing it--whatever it is you do--long after those beings have returned to invisibility and memory.

and then, the title verse is revealed in her final section, and there is a good many thought bodies to devour while contemplating food for the dead. it is because the dead are hungry that we write, atwood insists, and then elucidates her position with romantic references. i am stuck here, in this idea of how to communicate to the grave, through the grave and from the grave, as this is the only way i will ever come to understand my father now that he's passed on. and so it is in writing--the dead offer what could not be understood in life, and writing offers the food--the food of the dead--the food for the dead--the food for the living from the dead who are still with us--and because there are words, there are writers who string them together to form sustenance for the eventual end of the human who writes. the word, alone, remains in the world, silently waiting on the silent page, to break the silence open--with life--recorded for the living, from the dead, for the future, from the past, a voice, wholly out of time, that speaks in silences of life.

The pen is mightier than the sword..........2005-08-06

This is my first book reading experience by Maraget Atwood. It is a personable memoir that opened my eyes to the value, importance and creativity of writing. If anyone writes--in any way---they'll learn from this book. I was especially astonished to read how most writers have a sort of "double identity". It makes perfect sense in that a writer has to take on many forms, personalities and feelings in order to emote a character. She also points out that 'an art of any kind is a discipline'. I loved this book...and I feel like I'm a WIZARD (as in the Wizard of Oz). You'll understand what I mean if you read this book. I have to leave some element of suprise. Trust me, you will be surprised. A great book--for writers of any type. ;)

Brimful of brilliant!.......2005-07-18

I just finished reading this book and I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I feel that anyone who truly ponders the intricacies involved in the process of writing, anyone who has grappled with the process itself, will find this book relevant, beneficial, and even entertaining.
Margaret Atwood mingles wit with wisdom. Erudition with transparency.
It is unpretentious from start to finish, which I think is an Atwood hallmark.
As explained in the prologue, the six chapters are really six re-worked lectures, delivered in the year 2000 at Cambridge University. They are intended for "specialists in literature, general readers, and - especially - writers at an earlier stage or dewier stage than my own."
They are not sequentially built upon each other, but rather, they circle like gulls over a set of common themes having to do with the writer, the writer's medium, and the writer's art.
The three main questions covered are as follows: "Who are you writing for? Why do you do it? Where does it come from?"

Who, why, and where... and nowhere how.
This is not a book about how to write.
It is a book about what it is like to write.
What it MEANS, to be a writer.

The most interesting section, in my opinion, was the third, entitled "The Great God Pen" because it focused on the second question "Why does the writer write?"... my favorite of the three. Here, Atwood talked about the topic of "art for art" and it was fascinating. Does the writer write to make money? For hope of fame? To project a moral statement? Create something beautiful? Exonerate oneself? Impress the masses?
Her prodigious and eclectic wealth of reference points and allusions show that she did not begin her thoughts on this topic just last week. In this chapter (and the entire book) we are the recipients of a very-much-still-alive LIFETIME of experiential and theoretical research, of such a caliber it can be considered among the finest scholarship in the field.
And again, witty as all get out.
Here is an example of what I mean by that: "I can still hear the sneer in the tone of the Parisian intellectual who asked me, `Is it true you write the bestsellers?'
`Not on purpose,' I replied somewhat coyly." (p.68).

Much of the book reads as memoir yes! (as other reviewers have commented). But how can this be a negative thing? If it is the writer's life we are concerned with learning about, is it not wonderful that one of the best in the world will share with us relevant glimpses and pieces of her own?

Negotiating with the writer.......2005-04-02

A very entertaining, ultimately serious work about the various relationships between a writer, a work of literature and the reader - and the ethical and motivational issues that underly those relationships. All this is worn very lightly however, and one can easily overlook the intriguing ideas beneath the witty accessible prose. Recommended for the reader who wants to know what the self-examining writer thinks about when they choose to interrogate their profession in an ideological way.

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For All Ages and for All Time

Old Age
Helen M. Luke
Manufacturer: Morning Light Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0930407059
Release Date: 1988-03-01

Book Description

In this classic text on aging wisely, the renowned Jungian analyst Helen M. Luke reflects on the final journeys described in Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Tempest, and T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding, and also on suffering. In examining some of the great masterpieces of literature produced by writers at the ends of their lives, she elucidates the difference between growing old and disintegrating and encourages us to grow emotionally and mentally in this culminating stage of our own lives.

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For All Ages and for All Time.......2001-06-25

Like her former partner Robert A. Johnson, Helen Luke is a master of rendering the psychological meanings in great literature understandable and relevant to all people wishing to gain a deeper level of understanding about the growtn of the human soul. Having plumbed the depths of her own psycho-spiritual aging process(Such Stuff As Dreams are Made On), Ms. Luke has created a work fusing literary scholarship and personal experience into a guide for all of us to follow towards the inevitable. When the time comes for me to plant my oar (read her interpretation of The Odyssey)and turn towards the life of prayer, song and storytelling I will be eternally grateful to have had this wonderful Wise Woman as my guide. Deserving of a wide readership.

The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals (Oxford World's Classics)

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A Passion for the Particular*

The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals (Oxford World's Classics)
Dorothy Wordsworth
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192840622

Book Description

'I went and sate with W and walked backwards and forwards in the Orchard till dinner time - he read me his poem. I broiled Beefsteaks.' Dorothy Wordsworth's journals are a unique record of her life with her brother William, at the time when he was at the height of his poetic powers. Invaluable for the insight they give into the daily life of the poet and his friendship with Coleridge, they are also remarkable for their spontaneity and immediacy, and for the vivid descriptions of people, places, and incidents that inspired some of Wordsworth's best-loved poems. The Grasmere Journal was begun at Dove Cottage in May 1800 and kept for three years. Dorothy notes the walks and the weather, the friends, country neighbours and beggars on the roads; she sets down accounts of the garden, of Wordsworth's marriage, their concern for Coleridge, the composition of poetry. The earlier Alfoxden Journal was written during 1797-8, when the Wordsworths lived near Coleridge in Somerset .Not intended for publication, but to 'give Wm Pleasure by it', both journals have a quality recognized by Wordsworth when he wrote of Dorothy that 'she gave me eyes, she gave me ears'. This edition brings the reader closer to the hurried flow of Dorothy's writing and includes rich explanatory notes about the places and people described in the journals.

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A Passion for the Particular*.......2003-11-07

Dorothy Wordsworth's journals are an exquisite and delicate record of everyday life with the Wordsworths (Dorothy, William, Mary, his wife, and their close network of friends like Coleridge and Sara Hutchinson). Most interesting are her depictions of the landscapes and her descriptions of the marginalised peoples. Her journals note down destitute figures, a begger woman and her sons, a woman who drowned herself, two beggers, the plodding mail man etc.

Dorothy opens the window to a domesticated William Wordsworth, the Poet, at work in the acts of creation. Sunday Morning [14th of March 1802] reads, "...while we were at Breakfast that is (for I had breakfasted) he, with his Basin of Broth before him untouched and a little plate of Bread and butter he wrote the Poem to a Butterfly! He ate not a morsel, nor put on his stockings but sate with his shirt neck unbuttoned, and his waistcoat open while he did it."

Many literary critics have chosen to see Dorothy Wordsworth as a shadow of her brother, these readers say that Dorothy does not pocess a coherent self and they fault the patriarchal powers for her lack of an active self. I see Dorothy Wordsworth as a delicate, compassionate and kind person with "A Passion for the Particular."* She is, I feel, well aware of her self as a self, and also well aware of other selves as themselves. Her journal is littered with what she does achieves in her daily life.

This journal is a fantastic bedtime read. Her unique and careful narrative style, her emphasis and focus on truthful detail, all these make reading the journal a real pleasure. I only wish I discovered her earlier.

Book Description

Mary Blachford Tighe was born in Dublin in 1772 and became a poet by the age of seventeen. Her enormously popular 1805 epic poem Psyche; or, The Legend of Love made her a fixture of English literary history for much of the nineteenth century. In more recent years, however, Tighe's fame has lain not with the considerable merits of her own work but rather with her early influence on Keats's poetry.

The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe restores Tighe to the general canon of English literature of the period. With over sixty-five poems, including the complete Psyche, and extracts from several journals, both by and about Tighe, Harriet Kramer Linkin's annotated edition is the most complete collection of Mary Tighe's work to be published in one volume.

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