

How Fiction Works
Author: James Wood
Narrator: James Adams
Unabridged: 5 hr 47 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 04/21/2009
Categories: Nonfiction, Language Arts, Writing
Author: James Wood
Narrator: James Adams
Unabridged: 5 hr 47 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 04/21/2009
Categories: Nonfiction, Language Arts, Writing
James Wood is a staff writer at the New Yorker and a visiting lecturer in English and American literature at Harvard. Previously he taught literature with Saul Bellow at Boston University and, in 1994, served as a judge for the Booker Prize. He is the author of How Fiction Works, several essay collections, and the novel The Book against God.
James Adams is one of the world’s leading authorities on terrorism and intelligence, and for more than twenty-five years he has specialized in national security. He is also the author of fourteen bestselling books on warfare, with a particular emphasis on covert warfare. A former managing editor of the London Sunday Times and CEO of United Press International, he trained as a journalist in England, where he graduated first in the country. Now living in Southern Oregon, he has narrated numerous audiobooks and earned an AudioFile Earphones Award and two coveted Audie Award for best narration.
For 75 pages this was all clang clang clang goes the trolley ding ding ding goes the bell but then it turned a sharp corner and I think I done got throwed off the bus. Ow! As it rattled off without me I was left to think carefully about what I’m doing when I read a novel (aside from avoiding the int......more
Critics often get a bad reputation, and likely deservingly so. I often reflect on a quote by Macedonio Fernández that a critic knows nothing of what perfect literature is, but only what it is not and, especially while writing on Goodreads, am constantly haunted by Susan Sontag's Against Interpretati......more
A verymost entertaining and informative book about books and how writers make them from words placed in different orders. Split into handy chapters but written as one lengthy essay with numerical subheadings, Wood teaches us things from Flaubert, James, Joyce, Foster Wallace and other masters and mi......more
I kind of hate reading books of this sort as they leave me with a heightened awareness of style, character, rhythm, etc. that makes it difficult to read average or sub-par fiction. Of course, the benefit of reading books like this is that I do cultivate a more discriminatory taste so that I read onl......more
“Deservedly famous for [his] intellectual dazzle, literary acuteness and moral seriousness…Wood writes like a dream.” New York Times Book Review
“The real question he is addressing in this book is not what makes fiction work, but what makes the best fiction work better than the rest. This is a technical book, a primer of sorts, of interest to the practicing writer but probably most useful and illuminating for the serious reader who enjoys the fictive ride and wants to take a look under the hood…All of this is engagingly presented, and…I recommend it highly.” Washington Post
“How Fiction Works should delight and enlighten practicing novelists, would-be novelists, and all passionate readers of fiction.” Economist
“[Wood proves] that superior criticism not only unifies and interprets a literary culture but has the power to imagine it into being.” Harper’s Magazine
“Arguably the preeminent critic of contemporary English letters, [Wood] accomplishes his mission of asking a critic’s questions and offer[ing] a writer’s answers with panache. This book is destined to be marked up, dog-eared, and cherished.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“James Wood’s commanding discussion of the inner workings of fiction writing is an informative reference…This insightful and extremely thorough work is akin to a college lecture…[James Adams’] masterful grasp of the content makes for a keen accompaniment to the material.” AudioFile