The Writer's Desk

Rating:
Summary: Visually Beyond the Byline
Review: 10/3/97 Nashville's Southern Festival of Books. The only thing better than buying/enjoying The Writer's Desk was listening to Jill Krementz talk about the making of the book--showing both the photos used and the photos that didn't make it to print. As a aspiring author, it is wonderful to see these writers in their workspaces. It brings them beyond the byline--making the goal seem almost within reach. What a visual treat.

Rating:
Summary: Addictive
Review: A fascinating look at how and where a number of excellent writers work and write. A great gift book. Too often writers feel singularly alone when writing. These photos and anecdotes are great company and great inspiration for writers who spend all too much time working alone at their own desks.

Rating:
Summary: A glimpse into the world of writers.
Review: A mesmerizing book that provides a glimpse into the creative world of writers. I return to look at the book often hoping to gain some insight into and about writer's and their art. The book succeeds in wetting the apetite and creates even more mystery. Surely, there must be some common thread amongst writer's and surely that thread must be visible in the photographs in the book if only we look hard enough. A very intimate book, by design and a very private book to own and possess. One of the very few books that I continue to look and to seek inspiration.

Rating:
Summary: A Glimpse at Different Workspaces
Review: A wonderful book of black and white photos of writers in their habitats, some spartan, some cluttered. Accompanying each picture is a short blurb by the featured author. I only wish this book were longer and included more of my favorite authors.

John Updike's introduction is a must-read. He points out details that perhaps one might miss at first glance.

Rating:
Summary: A Glimpse at Different Workspaces
Review: A wonderful book of black and white photos of writers in their habitats, some spartan, some cluttered. Accompanying each picture is a short blurb by the featured author. I only wish this book were longer and included more of my favorite authors.

John Updike's introduction is a must-read. He points out details that perhaps one might miss at first glance.

Rating:
Summary: A great writers' browsing book . . .
Review: Every writer looks around his workplace sometimes and wonders what other writers' desks look like. It's almost a prurient interest. Krementz, who is married to Kurt Vonnegut and is a leading photojournalist, has photographed more than 1,500 writers at work in the past thirty years. This splendid slender book brings together photos of fifty-three authors in their habitats, from Pablo Neruda and Archibald MacLeish to Stephen King and Edwidge Dandicat. Each photo is accompanied by each author's thoughts on desks, typewriters, and writing methods and times of day. This is the sort of book you'll pick up over and over again, examining the clutter on James Merrill's desk, or wondering if you should try writing in bed, like Walker Percy or Cathleen Schine. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Oddly affecting
Review: First let me say that I am attached to my copy of The Writer's Desk. It may not leave the house. Get your own!

That said, I have to profess some mystery as to the depth of my own feeling or why someone should purposely purchase this for themselves. It is a small scale coffee table book for English majors, a nice gift for the contemporary lit minded or a gem to pluck off a sale table for oneself. Krementz's black and white photographs speak of her talent though I'm not sure I learn that much from them. They are more like illustrations for text that is all but missing, except for brief author quotes, or like roped off rooms in a writer's house turned local museum. But that's the problem we have with any creative artist--we can collect and assemble the physical life molecule by molecule (anyone here read Flaubert's Parrot?) and we will never quite understand how those great sentences get shaped the way they do.

At least we can marvel at the conditions under which those sentences get down, how each writer exerts order and control in a corner of their lives, to get their work done.

Rating:
Summary: Oddly affecting
Review: First let me say that I am attached to my copy of The Writer's Desk. It may not leave the house. Get your own!

That said, I have to profess some mystery as to the depth of my own feeling or why someone should purposely purchase this for themselves. It is a small scale coffee table book for English majors, a nice gift for the contemporary lit minded or a gem to pluck off a sale table for oneself. Krementz's black and white photographs speak of her talent though I'm not sure I learn that much from them. They are more like illustrations for text that is all but missing, except for brief author quotes, or like roped off rooms in a writer's house turned local museum. But that's the problem we have with any creative artist--we can collect and assemble the physical life molecule by molecule (anyone here read Flaubert's Parrot?) and we will never quite understand how those great sentences get shaped the way they do.

At least we can marvel at the conditions under which those sentences get down, how each writer exerts order and control in a corner of their lives, to get their work done.

Rating:
Summary: A Treat for Typewriter Collectors
Review: The main purpose of this book is to show the working environments of writers and to describe their work habits, but it is also a treat for typewriter collectors. As an amateur collector, I enjoyed trying to guess the makes of typewriters being used. It was especially interesting seeing how some writers continue to use manual typewriters, even in the 1990s.

Rating:
Summary: A Treat for Typewriter Collectors
Review: The main purpose of this book is to show the working environments of writers and to describe their work habits, but it is also a treat for typewriter collectors. As an amateur collector, I enjoyed trying to guess the makes of typewriters being used. It was especially interesting seeing how some writers continue to use manual typewriters, even in the 1990s.