Set aside those bulky how-to handbooks for this healthy balm of common-sense wisdom, inspiration, and encouragement.
A master class in fiction writing, taught by a National Book Award winner.
Fans of McDermott’s fiction should flock to this sprightly collection, which demonstrates that the author expects “a lot” from the craft. The first of 14 essays lays it on the line. Drawing on passages from fellow writers Mark Helprin, Philip Roth, and Eudora Welty, among others, McDermott writes that she’s always looking for “solace in art.” In addition, she looks for pain and the sweetness of life; authentic, memorable characters; and well-crafted sentences; but ultimately, “I expect fiction to seek to make sense of life and death—yours, mine, and everybody else’s.” High standards, indeed. McDermott ponders the importance of openings—“how many ways can a story seduce you into reading it”—as well as the necessity of a “hint of magic” and a “surge of joy” and how a satisfying ending casts us back to the beginning. Throughout, she draws on personal stories and numerous quotes from writers she admires. After exploring the nuts and bolts of what makes a good sentence, she delivers a healthy dose of Nabokov. McDermott’s simplest advice for fledging novelists is “for God’s sake, read what you’ve already written” to see how everything connects. She writes about telling a bunch of groaning third graders that “to be a writer was to have homework due for the rest of your life.” When suffering writer’s block, “sometimes nothing short of starting over will do.” In “Faith and Literature,” McDermott explores what it means to be a Catholic writer. Later, she offers a quick piece of priceless advice: “no inanimate object…in a story or a novel is arbitrary.” She tells her students, “Embrace the astonishing reality of a vivid world, a created world, formed only of words on a page. It’s a gift.”
Set aside those bulky how-to handbooks for this healthy balm of common-sense wisdom, inspiration, and encouragement.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-13062-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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