How Fiction Works

Auteur

James Wood is a staff writer at The New Yorker and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University. He is the author of How Fiction Works, as well as two essay collections, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self, and a novel, The Book Against God.

Texte du rabat

10th anniversary revised edition with new Introduction

James Wood's How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction-an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power.

Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional character? What constitutes a telling detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is Realism realistic? Why do some literary conventions become dated while others stay fresh?

James Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Make Way for Ducklings, from the Bible to John le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, How Fiction Works will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone else interested in what happens on the page.

Contenu

Contents

Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Edition xv

Narrating 1
Flaubert and Modern Narrative 37
Flaubert and the Rise of the Flaneur 45
Detail 58
Character 91
A Brief History of Consciousness 129
Form 157
Sympathy and Complexity 174
Language 185
Dialogue 215
Truth, Convention, Realism 224

Bibliography 251
Index 255