How Fiction Works

How Fiction Works Hardcover – July 22, 2008 by James Wood (Author).

What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely—from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings—Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step.

The result is nothing less than a philosophy of the novel—plainspoken, funny, blunt—in the traditions of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. It sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision. It will change the way you read.

Product details

• Format Hardback | 265 pages
• Dimensions 134 x 197 x 29mm | 349g
• Publication date 22 Jul 2008
• Publisher Farrar Straus Giroux
• Publication City/Country United States
• Language English
• ISBN10 0374173400
• ISBN13 9780374173401