25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful, December 20, 2003
This review is from: The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts (Paperback)
I purchased "The Art of Fiction" as a companion to other reading materials required for a class on Modern American Fiction. This is, as others have described, fairly lightweight in its language and/or depth of treatment. However, this is the book I use most often as a guide when writing short papers & essays. David Lodge is a master at clear and concise commentary. His purpose in this collection is to convey specific literary principles in a precise format (many appeared as newspaper columns). The preface states that this book is for people who like literary criticism in "small doses," and this is meant to be "a book to browse in, and dip into." The format is very convenient, as you can read an entire piece on-the-go, during lunch or in a waiting room. (Some examples of "chapters" are The Unreliable Narrator, The Non-Fiction Novel, Time-Shift, Magic Realism, and Metafiction.) I recommend this book for anyone who loves literature and wants to add more depth to their reading experience.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Reference Book, April 2, 2003
This review is from: The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts (Paperback)
David Lodge states in his introduction, "This is a book for people who prefer to take their Lit. Crit. in small doses," and this, indeed, is an accurate categorization for Lodge's, The Art of Fiction. This is a collection of articles on various topics of writing that he wrote during a stint with the Washington Post. While more experienced writers may find his fifty topics of writing, ranging from quite literally "Beginning[s]" to "Ending[s]" and some "Metafiction" or "Sense of Place" in between, somewhat elementary in their discussion, a beginning writer may find his book more useful.
Lodge is a fan of the classics. This is apparent in his choice to begin each chapter with an excerpt from authors such as Henry James, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, though more contemporary authors like Martin Amis and Anthony Burgess are slipped in every so often. And arguably, it was a wise choice of Lodge's to use classics as his examples if the beginning writer is his target audience so as to transmit a sense of what is conventional before launching off into magic realism. But be forewarned-Lodge terms his topics "doses" in the introduction as though implying his discussion will provide some sort of cure to the ailing writer-when, in fact, we all know the writing process does not have solutions or cures that suddenly make it easy to sit down and type away for two hours. Roughly three to four pages are devoted to each topic which give the book, as a whole, the feel of "Learning to Write in Twenty-Four Hours." In Lodge's defense, however, he does provide a quick, concise discussion that will serve as both a quick introduction to the beginner and a quick refresher to the more advanced writer.
"Skaz is a rather appealing Russian word used to designate a type of first person narration that has the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word. In this kind of novel or story, the narrator is a character who refers to himself (or herself) as "I," and addresses the reader as "you." This is the first paragraph after an excerpt from J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and quintessential of Lodge's process throughout the book. He defines the topic to his reader straight and immediately which gives the collection its quick feel. As long as the reader keeps in mind that his definitions are not the be all and end all of the writing topic at hand, this collection of definitions (with a human voice infiltrating the definition) can be useful.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
lovely but superficial introduction to some great books, July 12, 1999
This review is from: The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts (Paperback)
This book offers a highly digestible introduction to how fiction works and tempts the reader with some great exerpts from (modern) classics. It's also a nice opportunity to look at literature through the eyes of a professional, both at studying and practicing writing.
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