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Summary: A USEFUL fiction workshop in the palm of your hands.
Review: Finally! A book which not only gets to the heart of the"workshop" debate but also provides meaningful insights onwhat makes fiction work. On my shelf, this book has replaced Gardner's Art of Fiction as my bible for guidance in fiction writing.
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Summary: Woodsheddin' with the T.Monk of American lit ...
Review: One of the country's best young authors provides an excellent textbook treatment of architectural matters lying at the heart of a writer's most basic concerns. Mr. Bell examines the invisible structures that underlie fiction.
While emphasizing that "form is of first and final importance to any work ..." he also pays pleasurable attention to the writer's need for spontaneity, attending to the peculiar struggle battling in the mind of a writer that requires constant shifting between the right and left hemisphere's of the head.
Happily, from the very beginning of the book, Mr. Bell makes plain his distaste for absolute, undying allegiance to form, and in a provocative essay, allows himself the pleasure of ruminating about self-hypnosis and rock 'n' roll in ways that stretch the reader's imagination as a warm-up before undertaking the very serious, quite detailed analytical dissections of a series of short stories that follow.
The most significant aspect of Mr. Bell's analysis is that he points to two general methods of building narrative structures: one, he calls "linear design," which develops along the time continuum, the chronological flow of events with which we are all so familiar; and the second, which he calls "modular design" - a great form for non-fiction writers, I believe - which relies more on an arrangement of ideas, images, motifs or abstractions.
In linear design, a writer would think of his or her material as a sculptor might, regarding one block of wood or granite by imagining the seemless, smooth shape that could be carved or chiseled out. The overall work - the long form with its distinct beginning, middle and end - is considered the most important single aspect of the piece.
In modular design, however, the writer's effort is not aimed at whittling away at the block until the form beneath is clear, but at assembling bits and pieces, as one would a mosaic. Looking at the work from a distance, the writer would thoughtfully place these bits and pieces in a meaningful, aesthetically pleasing way, letting the natural contrast between pieces, speak to the whole. If linear design is essentially subtractive, Mr. Bell says, modular design is additive. In non-fiction, there are lots of great examples of this, such as Tracy Kidder's chapters on the lumber industry in his book "House." John McPhee has used this form, to a large extent, and to great success. Many essayists rely on modular design.
The book is particularly enjoyable because of the form Mr. Bell has chosen. He relies on a wide range of stories, analyzed in detail, peppered with footnotes, to examine the structural choices of professional and student writers. Best of all, Mr. Bell writes wonderfully and playfully. His observation of writing structure as analogous to the underlying chords for jazz or rock 'n' roll improvisation is an example of his own ability to riff on a theme, compelling writers to have fun, to think seriously about the value of form, but to find ways of using structure that leave the imagination lively and flexible.
I'm a fan of his, in part, because he brightens the literary landscape of my town, Baltimore, as a writing teacher at Goucher College, and he also happens to be a brilliant novelist, selected by Granta as one of the Best Young American Novelists in 1996 and a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction ("All Soul's Rising").
I am a non-fiction writer, so Mr. Bell's work interests me in ways in which his lessons can be applied to literary journalism. Although he does not discuss non-fiction, a genre that offers its own peculiar problems, the book can be useful for those who do not write fiction, but do rely on the techniques of fiction to strengthen the field of vision in creative non-fiction. He has noodled out many dilemmas of the craft, producing an excellent workshop book that any writer could take to the woodshed.
Like other estimable teaching books, such as John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction," Mr. Bell's "Narrative Design" is a gift for those who care to think seriously and deeply about applying architectural-like standards to narrative structure in the creation of their own literary arts.
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