On Writing

Zusatztext “In criticism as in fiction! Miss Welty’s observations are blessed with a dazzling accuracy.” — The Nation Informationen zum Autor One of America's most admired authors! Eudora Welty was born in Jackson! Mississippi! in 1909. She was educated locally and at Mississippi State College for Women! the University of Wisconsin! and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. She is the author of! among many other books!  One Writer's Beginnings! The Robber Bridegroom! Delta Wedding! The Ponder Heart! Losing Battles ! and  The Optimist's Daughter ! which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. She died in 2001. Klappentext Eudora Welty was one of the twentieth century's greatest literary figures. For as long as students have been studying her fiction as literature! writers have been looking to her to answer the profound questions of what makes a story good! a novel successful! a writer an artist. On Writing presents the answers in seven concise chapters discussing the subjects most important to the narrative craft! and which every fiction writer should know! such as place! voice! memory! and language. But even more important is what Welty calls "the mystery” of fiction writing—how the writer assembles language and ideas to create a work of art. Originally part of her larger work The Eye of the Story but never before published in a stand- alone volume! On Writing is a handbook every fiction writer! whether novice or master! should keep within arm's reach. Like The Elements of Style! On Writing is concise and fundamental! authoritative and timeless—as was Eudora Welty herself. Looking at Short Stories Looking at short stories as readers and writers together should be a companionable thing. And why not? Stories in their bardic and fairy-tale beginnings were told, the listeners—and judgers—all in a circle. E. M. Forster, in Aspects of the Novel , described the great age of the narrative: Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or woolly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him. That suspense is still with us, but it seems to me that now it exists as something shared. Reader and writer make it a double experience. It is part of the great thing in which they share most—pleasure. And it is certainly part of the strong natural curiosity which readers feel to varying degree and which writers feel to the most compelling degree as to how any one story ever gets told. The only way a writer can satisfy his own curiosity is to write it. And how different this already makes it from telling it! Suspense, pleasure, curiosity, all are bound up in the making of the written story. Forster went on to distinguish between what Neanderthal man told, the narrative thread, and what the written story has made into an art, the plot. “The king died and then the queen died” is the narrative thread; “The king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. We have all come from asking What next? to asking Why? The word “which,” of course, opened up everything, or as much of everything as the writer is able to handle. To take a story: Jack Potter, the town marshal of Yellow Sky, has gone to San Anton’ and got married and is bringing his bride back in a Pullman as a dazzling surprise for his hometown. And while the train is on its way, back in Yellow Sky Scratchy Wilson gets drunk and turns loose with both hands. Everybody runs to cover: he has come to shoot up the town. “And his boots had red tops with gilded imprints, of the kind beloved in winter by little sledding boys on the hillsides of Ne...

Product details

• Authors: Eudora Welty
• Publisher: Modern Library PRH US
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 24.09.2002
• EAN: 9780679642701
• ISBN: 978-0-679-64270-1
• No. of pages: 128
• Dimensions: 126 mm x 190 mm x 12 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature