Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, Jane Smiley

Very interesting. It addresses some of the gaps I felt in university English classes: I imagined that in university we would examine what it was that made poetry and prose great, powerful, whatever, and how the artist achieved the effects he did (it was always “he” then). Of course, we never did look at those things; courses were usually historical surveys and we were supposed to analyze technique fairly dispassionately. So Smiley has opinions on what I think are some really interesting aspects of how novels are written and how they achieve their effects -- such as the relative entertainment value of the first-person narrator vs. the omniscient narrator, etc.

It was a bit of a shock after 10 chapters on the features of 100 well-known novels to turn to two chapters on how to write a novel. I was not expecting the DIY aspect.

I had never heard of Jane Smiley before hearing of this book, but don’t want to read any of her novels now -- perhaps because they’re thoroughly autopsied here. She did make me want to read Madame de La Fayette’s The Princess of Clèves and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women.

-- M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands