Customer Reviews

Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction

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Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter is a refreshingly broad take on a number of issues facing writers and readers of serious fiction today. The title reminds me of a story Harry Crews once told concerning his early days learning the craft of fiction. He had given an early story to his teacher, Alan Tate, and when he asked what Tate thought of it he got the reply that "Fire is a great purifier" - so went home, burned his story and started over. Baxter seems to want to burn away a lot of what has come to dominate the literary scene. He bemoans the lack of real antagonists and villians in what he refers to as "dysfunctional" fiction. He decries the passive voice and ambiguos tone that writing in which no one is really accountable (which he blames largely on the polictical rhetoric of Nixon, Reagan,and Busch which he says has robbed the public of the proper 'story' of the last few decades).

This book of essays is enjoyable on a number of levels. One of my favorite chapters is the one in which he contrasts fiction writers with poets. This chapter is full of broad and exaggerated generalizations (which he has foretold and apologized for in advance) which are both thought provoking and often very funny. The chapter on melodrama is also very insightful and harking back to an earlier essay about dysfunctional fiction in which the characters are all victims and no one is a clear protagonist or antagonist, he shows how pure evil (a clear cut villian) is the essential ingrediant in melodrama and that is why melodrama continues to interest readers while lots of serious fiction doesn't register. He further shows how melodrama underpins some of the great fiction - using Chekov, that most unmelodramatic writer, as an example.

I really enjoyed this book and read it at one sitting - which is probably not good. There is so much that is thought provoking in these essays that they deserve more time and a lot of rumination. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in serious fiction today. It will give you a lot to think about.

I have had the amazing fortune to study with Mr. Baxter as his student at the University of Michigan where he is director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. I have taken classes taught by this man, I consider him a friend. In my humble opinion he is the finest instructor of the craft of writing that I have ever known.
On top of that, his fiction is some of the most thoughtful, controlled and refined work that is being produced in the English language, period. Knowing that I would think that anyone with an even remote interest in writing would like to pick his brain. I have had that opportunity (to a limited extent) here at the University. But now, with this wonderful book, beautifully written, anyone can venture into the mind of this master of the craft. It's like having an entire semster of Charlie's best sayings, ideas and thoughts on writing in a nicely bound and clearly written little package.
The fact of the matter is that this book goes on a writer's shelf between White's ELEMENTS OF STYLE and Gardener's ART OF FICTION. Like those two masterful volumes this new work is essential to what Charlie fondly calls "A writer's bag o' tricks." The essay RHYMING ACTION, by itself, would be worth the price of the book. In short, the work has become an essential text book for me, filled with both lively wit and precise instruction on not only the craft of a writer, but the life of a writer as well. I cannot stress enough the importance of this book

Any writer, anywhere, needs to read this book. I assign it to undergraduate and graduate students alike. Charles Baxter explores essential elements of fiction here, and has some surprising, convincing new ideas. He writes in a witty, reflective, fascinating voice that makes these essays a pleasure to read.

Reading this book transforms people's writing, deepening their approach and understanding. Take a look at his ideas about counterpointed characters, or about what replaces the idea of "conflict" in fiction.

An amazing, brilliant book.

Charles Baxter is one of our greatest living short story writers and with Burning Down the House, we find out why. This volume of meditations on the state of fiction past, present and future, gives insight to all that is stagnant in today's writing world. But this volume is not a death knell, rather it is a wakeup call to those who have forgotten the wonderful possiblities of fiction. Any writer or serious reader of fiction will cast a freshened eye to the page after reading this book

This is a fascinating and provocative collection of essays on writing and the state of North American literature in general. I admire Baxter's short fiction (in particular); this book not only adds another facet, the essays and his stories resonate in interesting ways.

Interested in writing fiction? Here's a collection of thoughful essays that will pique your imagination, as well as change the way you read fiction. Thoughtful, quirky, obsessive, this collection will intrigue anyone who loves literature.

I recall reading this text in 2002, having come to understand the author's POV from Phillip Deaver at Rollins, one of the finest instructors and writers I have come across... "I F**KED UP" is more effective than "mistakes were made" simply because there's some effective poetry there. Good advice, which I have had many occasions to use in my own writing. Thanks, Deaver and CB for helping me thwart CT and learn how to write.

Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House is as important a book as Henry James's The Art of Fiction or E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, with advice every bit as practical, as artfully conveyed, as thrilling to contemplate as James's and Forster's.

The book's highlight is Baxter's discussion of physical objects and how they can be made containers for emotions. There's plenty else to love, too, and I'll leave the thrill of discovery to the new reader, and a word about my jealousy, too: You're plenty lucky to be encountering this book for the first time. You're in for quite a pleasure.

The best essays in this collection present the idea of a thinking writer talking about writing--not just a critic's point of view, not just a teacher's point of view. The shortcomings of the critical perspective are, I think, obvious, but the pedagogical standpoint can also be limiting in that it can too easily fall into workshop mentality, where everything is immediately accesible and clear, and good fiction does not work to please immediately but resonate much further into a person's existence and challenge things that may have once seemed so easy to understand. Baxter is, of course, a teacher, but his viewpoint is to resist easy categorizations of anything, which show him to be a thinking writer, someone who evaluates and re-evaluates and considers and reconsiders his craft a lot, because in fiction there are no easy answers.

But even that last statement is not a fair one in Baxter's essays. He argues for the antagonist, for plot, discouraging fiction that is just a play of characters where everyone is understood and sympathized for. He also argues for the music of fiction, as well as its silence and the way it handles introspection. Though Baxter's examples of writers who exemplify the method he is currently expounding are not always convincing, and sometimes he seems to work hard to make sure he notes writers of various schools and styles (though I must admit that I appreciate his respect for the old Russians), Baxter clearly wants to make his ideas inviting. He is not out to present the art of writing as one sealed away in a silver tower, where only the priveleged few can partake and perhaps even create, but one that is necessary to us all. His opening essay, "Dysfunctional Naratives," immediately addresses the needs of fiction, especially in a current world of denial and self-denial. Clearly, Baxter is out to show the necessity of good writing, and to remind us what makes literature.

Baxter's most critical-style essay in here is on Donald Barthelme, which unfortuantely seemed to misunderestimate the Great One and maybe doesn't really dig into the level of satire and wit of the D. Barthelme, which was to be cognizant of the tensions of mixed language and the essences of words that Baxter notes and use those against themselves to create even more clarity in its own paradoxical way. Baxter's focus on D. Barthelme's work seems to focus on the more critically-studied ones rather than the works that were pure joys of ear and mind, like The King, so it would seem that Baxter fell into D. Barthelme's own trap on that one, by taking a critical eye and yet always being out of reach of that writer's true intents, which the critical eye cannot really focus on.

Overall, though, a worthwhile book for those learning the craft as well as those who love to read. Baxter, like a good magican, does not give away the tricks, for the tricks themselves are not the essence of the act (nor are they necessarily tricks). Instead, Baxter delves into the philiosophy of writing, its purest essence, and both writers and readers alike would be serviced well by this book for learning a few names to check out as well as seeing how the writing mind thinks--to learn to resist the easy conclusions and look for the more difficult ones, which are usually more correct, but also to take pleasure in your work and the works of others. This book came out before The Feast of Love, so in the artistic biography of Baxter this would seem to be when he gathered together his forces to write one of his best books, one that avoids epiphany and favors examination and also examines the silences between people in prose that most definitely sings.

Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction is a collection of nine essays on subjects that concern issues each professional fiction writer must--or should--consider in the creation of their work. The essays are varied and, for me at least, bear further study. This is a book I will turn to repeatedly, and one from which I believe I will gain added insight with each reading. Even with this first reading, I gleaned useful information and applicable instruction--not in the form of a how-to manual, but in a thoughtful, conversational examination of how we write and respond to writing in this generation. Baxter provided plenty of examples, not just from classic literature but from contemporary short stories and novels, as well. This is especially helpful for students and writers, like me, who may not be so well-versed and steeped in literary canon as to extricate meaning in lessons so often taught in writing craft books of this nature. I found this text refreshing.

My favorite essays included "Dysfunctional Narrative, or: Mistakes Were Made" and "Rhyming Action" which had laugh-out-loud moments, but was inspiringly educational, nonetheless.

Highly recommended not only to fiction writers, but to readers of fiction who want to consider the stories they read in a brighter light.