The Story Begins: Essays on Literature [Hardcover]

Amos Oz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 1999

In this collection of ten essays, Amos Oz shares his rich and rewarding experience as both writer and teacher. As he analyzes the opening sections of novels and short stories by such writers as Agnon, Gogol, Kafka, Chekhov, García Márquez, and Raymond Carver, Oz instructs, challenges, and guides. He writes about the notion of "beginnings," what the beginning of a novel or short story might "mean" to the author and how important it is. And best of all-he entertains. He highlights opening paragraphs in which authors make promises they may or may not deliver later in the work, or deliver in unexpected ways, or they may deliver more than they have promised. It is a game that miraculously and playfully engages both writer and reader. The Story Begins is a resourceful, accessible, and friendly companion for all students of literature and writing and for all book lovers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Examining the trouble the blank page presents to a writer?"beginning to tell a story is like making a pass at a stranger in a restaurant"?Israeli novelist Oz (Panther in the Basement, etc.) considers the methods authors use to draw readers into the "opening contracts" of a narrative. One oddity of this thin collection of essays, derived from talks at high schools and colleges, is that Oz has read each text in a Hebrew translation (except for a few Israeli writers who wrote in Hebrew to begin with), whether by Chekhov or Gogol, Theodor Fontane or Marquez, which presumably affects at least nuances, especially given that Oz focuses on such small portions of the texts. Oz's interest in discovering what the reader must accept to become entrapped in the tale is especially illuminating of Chekhov's "Rothschild's Fiddle" and Elsa Morante's History: A Novel. In other analyses?for instance, a Raymond Carver story or a Franz Kafka fantasy?extensive quotations only pad elaborations of the obvious. This short, if feisty and often amusing, book is ultimately sketchy, suggesting a longer study abandoned early in the going. It certainly would have been more fruitful if Oz had spent as much time contemplating middles and endings as he does fretting about beginnings.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Oz, one of Israel's finest writers (e.g., Panther in the Basement, LJ 8/15/97), has written a short guide to reading. Using the beginnings of various works, he explains how to intrepret text. He is especially interesting when discussing the Hebrew writers S.Y. Agnon, Yizhar, and Aharon Shabtai. In thinking about other writers, Oz gives insight into his own methods and style, explaining that the truthfulness and honesty of the narrator's voice is an important element in thinking about the work. Oz also explains how important it is to relate beginnings to the whole text. Besides the Hebrew authors, he considers Fontaine, Gogol, Kafka, Chekhov, Morante, Garcia Marquez, and Carver. A good job; buy for literature collections.?Gene Shaw, New York P.L.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (March 29, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151002975
• ISBN-13: 978-0151002979
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,820,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To draw the reader in and keep him telling the story, April 3, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Story Begins: Essays on Literature (Hardcover)

In this small book the Israeli writer Amos Oz analyzes story- beginnings . The writers of the stories are Fontane, Agnon, Chekhov, Yaacov Shabtai,Dostoevsky, Raymond Carver, among others.

He introduces the volume by describing the difference between a storyteller- novelist , writer of fiction works, and the way a scholarly researcher works. His father who was a scholar had a desk piled with books, and at every stage of the writing process backed it up with citations and support. Oz talks about facing the blank page, and the special freedom it gives. He also talks about its special burden. He speaks also about how the writer's aim must be to draw the reader inside the story, so that the reader in effect is also writing the story when reading it.

Oz is a master and his thoughts on these stories are insightful. It is interesting that each of the chapters comes from a lesson or lecture, some of which he gave at the Kibbutz Brenner high school, and others at Haifa University.

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, January 17, 2006

By 

Terry Bohannon (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Story Begins: Essays on Literature (Hardcover)

I was introduced to Amos Oz through a short story of his, "Nomad and Viper." The shifting of point of view in that story is amazing, and demonstrates a technical skill lacked by most American authors.

I have been reading Oz's "The Story Begins," and I am not disappointed. This book should be on every writer's bookshelf. In analyzing how various authors begin their stories (some short, some long), Amos Oz allows his readers to begin to perceive many of the finer techniques in beginning a story.

A story's beginning can be lucid, it can draw readers in and make covenants with them, sometimes without the author's cognizance. It are on these covenants, the keeping or breaking of them, that Oz focuses on -- and I do use 'covenant' rather than what's translated to promise because that's the sense of the word I think he intends; I don't know what he wrote in the Hebrew. When an author is faithful to the covenant he made, his story becomes very powerful. Whereas, if the covenant were to have been broken, the opening would be a tease.

I strongly recommend "The Story Begins." It is a book I will have on my bookshelf for some time.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Story Begins : Essays on Literature, June 24, 2001

By 

Ziv Katz (Petach-Tikva,Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Story Begins: Essays on Literature (Hardcover)

Oz's most recent work is a series of essays on literature.
The title translates as The Story Begins, and the essays focus on the beginnings and openings of stories,
Which Oz argues are as important to the fabric of a story as endings.
By analyzing the opening sections of novels and short stories by such writers as Gogol, Kafka, Chekhov and Raymond Carver.
Oz demonstrates how authors make promises they may not deliver on, or deliver promises in unexpected ways, or deliver more than they have promised.