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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Highly Intelligent, Highly Useful Collection of Essays About Writing Fiction, September 9, 2008
This review is from: The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction (Paperback)
Unlike some of the other Amazon customers who have reviewed The Half-Known World, I have never been fortunate enough to be Robert Boswell's student, nor have I ever met him. But after reading the book, I understand some of the reasons for their praise and loyalty. These essays are not only well-written and therefore quite entertaining in their own right; they are also very useful.
To give one example, I was very taken with "On Omniscience," an essay about the uses of the omniscient point of view. Here is the provocation the essay wraps itself around: "Omniscience and half-knowledge would seem to be adversarial terms, but it turns out they're not." Boswell follows up with a list of "twelve planks in my platform on omniscience," which clearly and, so far as I can tell, for the first time in literary history clearly identify the parameters and possibilities of the omniscient point of view as clearly as they have been many times (in many ways, by many writers) been articulated for points of view limited to the consciousness of a single character.
For the reader of fiction, this is an interesting thing to think about, and it certainly enriches the process of reading stories rooted in omniscient strategies. But for the writer of fiction, this is a hugely useful analytic tool that can help the writer find the right form, the right voice, the right distance, and the right balance of characters in order to create organically a container and working method suitable for the story and thematic concerns of his or her project.
The only other contemporary writer I know who has grappled so helpfully with omniscience is Richard Russo, in an uncollected essay I can't find anywhere. But Boswell has done Russo one better, and I am grateful for what he has given his readers in "On Omniscience."
There are nine other essays in the book, all of them quite good, all of them deserving more space than an Amazon review allows. What I mean to do here, anyway, isn't to tell you everything about the book, but rather to whet your appetite a little, to do a little bit of consumer advocacy on behalf of The Half-Known World, which is worth your time and money, and then some.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You Must Change Your Life, August 6, 2008
This review is from: The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction (Paperback)
I was fortunate to work with with Robert Boswell as a graduate student and know, first-hand, what a brilliant teacher he is. I've read or heard portions of a few of these lectures over the years and have been eagerly awaiting the publication of this book. I devoured it as soon as it came out, immediately began re-reading it, and will certainly include it as a text in the undergraduate and graduate fiction writing courses I teach. These essays--frequently funny, always provocative--deftly combine first-rate and lively analysis of classic and contemporary fiction with a master storyteller's understanding of craft and an artist's understanding of process. These essays fall squarely in the tradition of books by brilliant writers--Henry James, E. M. Forster, Flannery O'Connor, Charles Baxter come to mind--who know how to excavate and articulate the mysteries of the art of fiction in a way that is enlightening, witty, and, quite frankly, deeply moving. If you're a serious reader of fiction or a writer of it, buy this book. It might very well, as the title of the last essay suggests, change your life.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Modern Day Reference Book for All Writers, July 24, 2008
This review is from: The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction (Paperback)
This book is a fresh narrative from one of the best writers in America today. His fiction is spot-on and breathtaking. Boswell teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Writing Program, and he does a fine job of taking you with him to explore what makes for great writing. It is almost like you are in class with him and you are listening to his views on writing. His book resonates with all writers, beginning or otherwise. This is a great "go-to" book for reference when the writer in you gets bogged down and is trudging through the mush and needs a fresh perspective. Boswell eliminates the "techno-jargon," and gets in your face with ways to create fiction that works. Each chapter discusses in essay format many present and past works, referencing such diverse writers as Chekov and Tolstoy, Jean Thompson and Peter Taylor, and many others. In my view, the first essay and title of the book, "The Half-Known World," has a section in it that tells readers about five categories of failure, and this is worth the price of the book alone. Many times, writers get stuck in these categories, and Boswell offers a way out of the sludge pile to better writing, lively characters and imaginative settings. Highly recommended and a great book to have around when you write your next novel or short story.
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