What do you think?
Rate this book
L'Art de la fiction
In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader.
He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.
He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.
324 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
369 people are currently reading
4827 people want to read
About the author
David Lodge
114 books933 followersDavid John Lodge was an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T.S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as Point of View (Henry James), The Stream of Consciousness (Virginia Woolf) and Interior Monologue (James Joyce), beginning with Beginning and ending with Ending.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 260 reviews
March 28, 2017
Literary criticism is often daunting for a novice. I have ploughed through a lot of serious critical tomes in my life (most of them in Malayalam) to enhance my reading experience, but I must confess that I have been only partly successful: many of those erudite essays were way over my head. And when it comes to literary theory, I must shamefacedly say that I have still not understood the difference between “Classicism”, “Modernism” and “Post-Modernism”. Any mention of “Deconstruction” is enough to have me heading for the high hills! And even though I can write a grammatically correct sentence without help, the mention of “synedoche”, “metonymy” and the like makes me go weak in the knees.
However, as an avid reader, I am always interested in knowing what makes great literature work. What magic do these wordsmiths have, which we ordinary mortals lack, which makes us go to them again and again? It has been my dream to find a critic who would explain the tricks of the trade in simple terms for me – a dream which was realised through the above book.
In The Art of Fiction, popular novelist David Lodge explains the tools of the writer’s craft in simple English. It comprises fifty short articles, originally published as pieces in a newspaper column. Instead of quoting theory, Lodge takes one or two novels as example and uses them to illustrate particular aspects of writing good fiction. Fittingly, he begins with “Beginning” and ends with “Ending”!
Some of the aspects Lodge describes are common to all fiction (beginning, ending, point of view, introducing a character, suspense) while some deal with specific techniques writers use (stream of consciousness, interior monologue, repetition, defamiliarisation, time-shift): yet other chapters introduce us to schools of writing (Magical Realism, Surrealism). There are also interesting chapters on titles (I never really pondered on how much authors sweat over these!), the use of lists in stories, and the possibilities of the telephone. I found every one of them fascinating.
The author quotes from the story he is going to discuss at the beginning of each chapter, which passage is then analysed. This analysis is used as a springboard for jumping into wider aspects of the subject. Before one knows, one is engrossed in the analysis; and in the case of the stories one has read, it creates the classic “aha!” reaction – like seeing the secret behind a magic trick. And it also gives one the chance to ruminate on the same technique used by different authors (for example, Lodge’s analysis of the time-shifts in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie immediately had me comparing it with A Visit from the Goon Squad, a novel written entirely based on this technique).
Newton said: “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” The same can be said of literature. The author’s inspiration, without the proper craft to package it, often falls flat. This book gives us an introduction that hallowed craft of the great writers; it also illustrates the fact that one can’t separate the subject from the form in case of great writing, for the novelist chooses the form of his story based on what he wants to convey. David Lodge introduced me to that craft in a very accessible way – and he has also inspired me to read the greats with a greater appreciation for their technique.
If you are a book-nerd like me without much knowledge of the workings of the great literary machine, this book is for you.
Review also on my Blog .
However, as an avid reader, I am always interested in knowing what makes great literature work. What magic do these wordsmiths have, which we ordinary mortals lack, which makes us go to them again and again? It has been my dream to find a critic who would explain the tricks of the trade in simple terms for me – a dream which was realised through the above book.
In The Art of Fiction, popular novelist David Lodge explains the tools of the writer’s craft in simple English. It comprises fifty short articles, originally published as pieces in a newspaper column. Instead of quoting theory, Lodge takes one or two novels as example and uses them to illustrate particular aspects of writing good fiction. Fittingly, he begins with “Beginning” and ends with “Ending”!
Some of the aspects Lodge describes are common to all fiction (beginning, ending, point of view, introducing a character, suspense) while some deal with specific techniques writers use (stream of consciousness, interior monologue, repetition, defamiliarisation, time-shift): yet other chapters introduce us to schools of writing (Magical Realism, Surrealism). There are also interesting chapters on titles (I never really pondered on how much authors sweat over these!), the use of lists in stories, and the possibilities of the telephone. I found every one of them fascinating.
The author quotes from the story he is going to discuss at the beginning of each chapter, which passage is then analysed. This analysis is used as a springboard for jumping into wider aspects of the subject. Before one knows, one is engrossed in the analysis; and in the case of the stories one has read, it creates the classic “aha!” reaction – like seeing the secret behind a magic trick. And it also gives one the chance to ruminate on the same technique used by different authors (for example, Lodge’s analysis of the time-shifts in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie immediately had me comparing it with A Visit from the Goon Squad, a novel written entirely based on this technique).
Newton said: “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” The same can be said of literature. The author’s inspiration, without the proper craft to package it, often falls flat. This book gives us an introduction that hallowed craft of the great writers; it also illustrates the fact that one can’t separate the subject from the form in case of great writing, for the novelist chooses the form of his story based on what he wants to convey. David Lodge introduced me to that craft in a very accessible way – and he has also inspired me to read the greats with a greater appreciation for their technique.
If you are a book-nerd like me without much knowledge of the workings of the great literary machine, this book is for you.
Review also on my Blog .
July 16, 2025
Minor amendments 8 October 2021.
David Lodge’s book has made me think differently about my reading: indeed to read with a new eye.
To enhance our understanding of what authors do to tell their fictional stories, Lodge examines the different approaches writers can take and the numerous techniques they employ. He does not deconstruct so much as analyse the various angles we can use to understand and appreciate fiction. He talks about, among other things: beginning, ending, the intrusive author, the stream of consciousness approach, place, weather, time–shifting, staying on the surface, the telephone, irony, motivation and symbolism.
I read the book gradually, dipping in and out of the text, which helped me take in the different points as he made them. Given that I have read a number of novels since then, and that Lodge writes clearly and entertainingly, his lessons have stayed with me.
A lot of this stuff I knew already, at least on a sub-conscious level. Articulating it raises the matters to a conscious level. So what did I learn? Lots:
• Names: an author chooses names carefully they ‘are never neutral’. They can be comic (Pumblechook), or realistic (Emma Woodhouse). I read a world war two spy story, Restless by William Boyd, where one of the ambiguous characters, who was always on the move, was named Romer (= roamer = restless). It’s a bit of a clue. Dickens did it all the time: witness the hard man Mr Murdstone and the obsequious Uriah Heep from David Copperfield.
My favourite example, not from Lodge’s book, is Ian Fleming’s choice for his spy hero. He had a book on his shelf at his home Golden Eye in Jamaica called Birds of the West Indies: A Field Guide to the Birds of the Caribbean and the Bahamas, Fourth Edition (The International Series), by ornithologist James Bond, published in 1936. Fleming wanted a plain simple name. A spy is born.
• Magic realism is principally practised by authors who have experienced national upheavals.
• There are different ways of telling a story; by using different voices, referencing other works (intertextuality), using repetitive prose, or plain or fancy prose.
• Co-incidence can be used to bring characters together and to tie events. It tends to feature more in the comic world than the more serious work.
Throughout the book Lodge uses good examples (Austen, Hemingway - repetition 'using simple denotive language purged of stylistic decoration', Bennett, Eliot) and sometimes his own novels, which has the advantage of the author knowing exactly what the creator of his illustration was trying to achieve.
I recently read a Biggles book by Captain WE Johns, Biggles Goes to War, and paused to wonder why I liked it and what its enduring appeal might be. It is after all a book written for boys a very long time ago and contains outdated attitudes, is touchingly naïve and follows a pattern immediately familiar to readers of Captain Johns' series. A small mythical European principality being monstered by a bullying neighbour. Biggles and his loyal comrades come to the rescue by shooting down enemy aircraft, blowing up a bridge, rescuing a diplomat and generally interfering in the politics of the warring states.
In Lodge’s terms though, the author gives us a sense of place, an exotic one, he changes our point of view, shifts time, uses co-incidence (quite a bit) and tellingly, gives us the motivation of the characters. For me the daring–do is pleasing enough but it is the doubts, apprehensions and anticipated difficulties in our hero’s head that make the story worthwhile and transcend its original purpose of spinning a yarn for the boys of pre-war Britain.
The Art of Fiction is a very good book which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who likes reading fiction.
David Lodge’s book has made me think differently about my reading: indeed to read with a new eye.
To enhance our understanding of what authors do to tell their fictional stories, Lodge examines the different approaches writers can take and the numerous techniques they employ. He does not deconstruct so much as analyse the various angles we can use to understand and appreciate fiction. He talks about, among other things: beginning, ending, the intrusive author, the stream of consciousness approach, place, weather, time–shifting, staying on the surface, the telephone, irony, motivation and symbolism.
I read the book gradually, dipping in and out of the text, which helped me take in the different points as he made them. Given that I have read a number of novels since then, and that Lodge writes clearly and entertainingly, his lessons have stayed with me.
A lot of this stuff I knew already, at least on a sub-conscious level. Articulating it raises the matters to a conscious level. So what did I learn? Lots:
• Names: an author chooses names carefully they ‘are never neutral’. They can be comic (Pumblechook), or realistic (Emma Woodhouse). I read a world war two spy story, Restless by William Boyd, where one of the ambiguous characters, who was always on the move, was named Romer (= roamer = restless). It’s a bit of a clue. Dickens did it all the time: witness the hard man Mr Murdstone and the obsequious Uriah Heep from David Copperfield.
My favourite example, not from Lodge’s book, is Ian Fleming’s choice for his spy hero. He had a book on his shelf at his home Golden Eye in Jamaica called Birds of the West Indies: A Field Guide to the Birds of the Caribbean and the Bahamas, Fourth Edition (The International Series), by ornithologist James Bond, published in 1936. Fleming wanted a plain simple name. A spy is born.
• Magic realism is principally practised by authors who have experienced national upheavals.
• There are different ways of telling a story; by using different voices, referencing other works (intertextuality), using repetitive prose, or plain or fancy prose.
• Co-incidence can be used to bring characters together and to tie events. It tends to feature more in the comic world than the more serious work.
Throughout the book Lodge uses good examples (Austen, Hemingway - repetition 'using simple denotive language purged of stylistic decoration', Bennett, Eliot) and sometimes his own novels, which has the advantage of the author knowing exactly what the creator of his illustration was trying to achieve.
I recently read a Biggles book by Captain WE Johns, Biggles Goes to War, and paused to wonder why I liked it and what its enduring appeal might be. It is after all a book written for boys a very long time ago and contains outdated attitudes, is touchingly naïve and follows a pattern immediately familiar to readers of Captain Johns' series. A small mythical European principality being monstered by a bullying neighbour. Biggles and his loyal comrades come to the rescue by shooting down enemy aircraft, blowing up a bridge, rescuing a diplomat and generally interfering in the politics of the warring states.
In Lodge’s terms though, the author gives us a sense of place, an exotic one, he changes our point of view, shifts time, uses co-incidence (quite a bit) and tellingly, gives us the motivation of the characters. For me the daring–do is pleasing enough but it is the doubts, apprehensions and anticipated difficulties in our hero’s head that make the story worthwhile and transcend its original purpose of spinning a yarn for the boys of pre-war Britain.
The Art of Fiction is a very good book which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who likes reading fiction.
July 19, 2023
David'skeen eye for detail and ability to dissect and analyze complex narratives make this book a standout resource for anyone eager to enhance their writing skills. He introduces various literary techniques, exploring them through carefully selected excerpts from renowned works of literature. This interactive approach truly brings the art of fiction to life, allowing us to witness the techniques in action and grasp their impact on storytelling.
As a passionate reader and aspiring writer myself, I found this book to be an invaluable guide that provides practical advice, insightful analysis, and a profound understanding of the creative process.
As a passionate reader and aspiring writer myself, I found this book to be an invaluable guide that provides practical advice, insightful analysis, and a profound understanding of the creative process.
August 31, 2019
This book from the 90s is a collection of short columns about fiction, with topics like "the ending", "structure of a novel", "the title", etc. Each column/essay is only a few pages long and is centered around an abstract from a piece of literary fiction, mostly novels.
For a book on literary critique it's rather easy to read, also because the short sections aren't linked in any way. You don't need a long attention span. On the other hand, I found the book rather superficial. I'd hoped to maybe learn a bit more that I could use for my own writing, and I didn't. There's just not a lot of substance, and a lot of the columns are rather like "titles: have you ever considered how important a title might be for a story? because it is!" but with a nicer flow and some more intellectual words thrown in.
It's not bad as an introduction to the topics maybe, and it was an okay read, but a bit superfluous.
For a book on literary critique it's rather easy to read, also because the short sections aren't linked in any way. You don't need a long attention span. On the other hand, I found the book rather superficial. I'd hoped to maybe learn a bit more that I could use for my own writing, and I didn't. There's just not a lot of substance, and a lot of the columns are rather like "titles: have you ever considered how important a title might be for a story? because it is!" but with a nicer flow and some more intellectual words thrown in.
It's not bad as an introduction to the topics maybe, and it was an okay read, but a bit superfluous.
September 17, 2020
Literature reviews are very personal things. In school you learn English Language too, by which judgements of narrative quality, or what I as a scientist would rather call 'narrative efficiency', can be made based on the author's effective use of structural stylistic elements — punctuation, syntax and concision.
The short story is that if you want to develop original and kickass reflections of literary criticism for high school novels or plays you must write essays on, this is a brilliant book that contains many quotable examples of 'generalist principles' of what makes stylistic elements of fiction reveal author intent or improve an author's impact. In fairness, I only read half of this in my free time to bump my IB English grades up in high school, but what I learned stayed with me and gave me the confidence to construct and apply my own interpretations. Needless to say, it sure did help my grades! It's probably the strongest contributor to the pedantic and critical scrutiny I sometimes I apply in my reviews.
The short story is that if you want to develop original and kickass reflections of literary criticism for high school novels or plays you must write essays on, this is a brilliant book that contains many quotable examples of 'generalist principles' of what makes stylistic elements of fiction reveal author intent or improve an author's impact. In fairness, I only read half of this in my free time to bump my IB English grades up in high school, but what I learned stayed with me and gave me the confidence to construct and apply my own interpretations. Needless to say, it sure did help my grades! It's probably the strongest contributor to the pedantic and critical scrutiny I sometimes I apply in my reviews.
April 28, 2015
The very fact that the book has compelled me to put down my thoughts here when I've barely finished reading a quarter of it should reflect on how much a wonderful read it is.
What David Lodge has done is quite simple - he has chosen a variety of styles in fiction eg intrusive author, unreliable narrator, suspense, symbolism, magical realism, interior monologue etc and illustrated each of them with a passage taken from a well known book with a succinct missive to go with them.
The beauty of the book is in its discretion and economy, making it easier to relate it to a lay reader ( by which I mean a reader who had the fortune of escaping the painful literary expositions of neurotic university professors).
Consider these chapters - Interior Monologue, Stream of Consciousness, Symbolism - as I think of these literary techniques, left to myself, I would have choosen Edouard Dujardin, James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald, but then I realise how wrong my choices would be, because these chaps almost master and monopolise their respective techniques, thereby rendering themselves a poorer example for an average lay reader.
Then as you read the simple missives, you see why David Lodge's choices are James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and DH Lawrence!
I gather these chapters appeared as weekly articles in the Independent in the 90s. I could easily picture myself religiously waiting for the articles every week, so that I could cut them off for my collection. Well, with the book, I guess that would be unnecessary.
What David Lodge has done is quite simple - he has chosen a variety of styles in fiction eg intrusive author, unreliable narrator, suspense, symbolism, magical realism, interior monologue etc and illustrated each of them with a passage taken from a well known book with a succinct missive to go with them.
The beauty of the book is in its discretion and economy, making it easier to relate it to a lay reader ( by which I mean a reader who had the fortune of escaping the painful literary expositions of neurotic university professors).
Consider these chapters - Interior Monologue, Stream of Consciousness, Symbolism - as I think of these literary techniques, left to myself, I would have choosen Edouard Dujardin, James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald, but then I realise how wrong my choices would be, because these chaps almost master and monopolise their respective techniques, thereby rendering themselves a poorer example for an average lay reader.
Then as you read the simple missives, you see why David Lodge's choices are James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and DH Lawrence!
I gather these chapters appeared as weekly articles in the Independent in the 90s. I could easily picture myself religiously waiting for the articles every week, so that I could cut them off for my collection. Well, with the book, I guess that would be unnecessary.
August 8, 2014
I’m taking another online course at Oxford University (continuing education) this fall, and one of the books we have to read for the course is this one. I knew of David Lodge already but have never read anything by him. I love reading literary critique, or whatever you would call this compilation of extracts analyzed with different literary perspectives, especially when the author of the book is also a writer and can thus appreciate and not merely analyze the texts. The book is a relatively small paperback, very accessible due to the short chapters and the lack of too much jargon, and very readable.
It was useful and interesting the way in which Lodge delved into a multitude of aspects, some of which I had expected (like characters, point of view, suspense, the sense of place) but some which I hadn’t thought much about (like lists, coincidence, the telephone). (I did wonder why he didn’t have a chapter about dialog, expecting an extract from a Hemingway short story or something). I enjoyed how he often put the texts he used into a literary/historical context, and of course I particularly enjoyed the sections where I had actually read the novels he referred to (e.g. by Austen, Waugh, Dickens, Forster), though thankfully he almost never refers to any obscure authors I didn’t know.
Having said this, one thing annoyed me – on several occasions, namely that he couldn’t suppress the urge to include his own work, sometimes in chapters alongside some of the Great Authors. This irked me because surely he could have found a dozen other works to illustrate some of those points (although, granted, it gave us an insider’s perspective, but still). I just basically feel that if you’ve written or otherwise done something pretty brilliant or noteworthy, it’s up to someone else to point it out, not you.
The book is from 1992 so there aren’t any very recent examples, through no fault of Lodge’s obviously, but I’d like to read something like this which might also include extracts by authors like Barnes and McEwan, or Rowling for that matter, although I do appreciate that most of the works he refers to here (apart from his own – sic!) could be considered classics of more or less international standard.
It was useful and interesting the way in which Lodge delved into a multitude of aspects, some of which I had expected (like characters, point of view, suspense, the sense of place) but some which I hadn’t thought much about (like lists, coincidence, the telephone). (I did wonder why he didn’t have a chapter about dialog, expecting an extract from a Hemingway short story or something). I enjoyed how he often put the texts he used into a literary/historical context, and of course I particularly enjoyed the sections where I had actually read the novels he referred to (e.g. by Austen, Waugh, Dickens, Forster), though thankfully he almost never refers to any obscure authors I didn’t know.
Having said this, one thing annoyed me – on several occasions, namely that he couldn’t suppress the urge to include his own work, sometimes in chapters alongside some of the Great Authors. This irked me because surely he could have found a dozen other works to illustrate some of those points (although, granted, it gave us an insider’s perspective, but still). I just basically feel that if you’ve written or otherwise done something pretty brilliant or noteworthy, it’s up to someone else to point it out, not you.
The book is from 1992 so there aren’t any very recent examples, through no fault of Lodge’s obviously, but I’d like to read something like this which might also include extracts by authors like Barnes and McEwan, or Rowling for that matter, although I do appreciate that most of the works he refers to here (apart from his own – sic!) could be considered classics of more or less international standard.
October 1, 2015
ترجیح میدم نکتهای اشاره کنم
نقاط قوت کتاب:
۱- تعدد نکات و متنها، آشنایی مخاطب با یک گسترهی خوب از نویسندههایی که مورد علاقهی مخاطب بریتانیاییان.
۲- درکِ «از درونِ» دیوید لاج از نویسندگی و ترفندهاش.
۳- انتخاب درست سرفصلها و حیطهها.
۴- پوشش شیوههای رماننویسی از کلاسیک تا پساپستمدرنیته!
نقاط ضعف:
۱- ترجمهی (نه نامفهوم، ولی) سرشار از غلط، کژفهمی و نابلدیِ مترجم پرمدعا.
۲- زیادتر از حد بریتانیایی و انگلیسیزبانمحور بودنِ مولف. مثل قریب به اتفاق مولفهای انگلیسی و امریکایی.
۳- واکاوی معلموار و نه منتقدانهی خیلی از نکات.
۴- ارجاع به متون خودش، که الحق نویسندهی بزرگی نیست.
در کل از لحاظ تئوری داستانپردازی خیلی ضعف مرجع داریم، پس علیالحساب همین کارِ پرغلط رضا رضایی رو باید خوند.
نقاط قوت کتاب:
۱- تعدد نکات و متنها، آشنایی مخاطب با یک گسترهی خوب از نویسندههایی که مورد علاقهی مخاطب بریتانیاییان.
۲- درکِ «از درونِ» دیوید لاج از نویسندگی و ترفندهاش.
۳- انتخاب درست سرفصلها و حیطهها.
۴- پوشش شیوههای رماننویسی از کلاسیک تا پساپستمدرنیته!
نقاط ضعف:
۱- ترجمهی (نه نامفهوم، ولی) سرشار از غلط، کژفهمی و نابلدیِ مترجم پرمدعا.
۲- زیادتر از حد بریتانیایی و انگلیسیزبانمحور بودنِ مولف. مثل قریب به اتفاق مولفهای انگلیسی و امریکایی.
۳- واکاوی معلموار و نه منتقدانهی خیلی از نکات.
۴- ارجاع به متون خودش، که الحق نویسندهی بزرگی نیست.
در کل از لحاظ تئوری داستانپردازی خیلی ضعف مرجع داریم، پس علیالحساب همین کارِ پرغلط رضا رضایی رو باید خوند.
November 24, 2020
No wonder The Art of Fiction is mandatory in the bibliography of many Literature 101 students. It explains beautifully, by analyzing excerpts from various masterpieces, essential notions of literary theory and criticism. Even if its 50 sections were initially written for a weekly newspaper column, and with the declared intention to be comprehensible to a general public, "The Art of Fiction" introduces the basic notions for anyone who intends to lose the innocence of reading and become a critic en herbe.
Somehow ironically dull, the book begins with the Beginning, and ends, of course with the Ending, both chapters presenting various ways to introduce and finish a story. In between, we learn about narrative voices, about the form and the structure, the time and the space, the language, the plot and so on, as we did (and forgot!) in high school and college.
I liked a lot of text analyses and, as always, I enjoyed reading Lodge, although I have to confess I'm familiar with many of the notions presented.
However, I've learnt some, too:
- that you can use the term "skaz" "to designate a type of first-person narration that has the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word." (The Catcher in the Rye is an example);
- that another term for poetic prose is fancy prose;
- that there is a form of intertextuality named "missed opportunity" (a piece of information that would have suited a novel had it been discovered while writing it);
- that there is an experimental novel named Alphabetical Africa in which the first chapter contains only words that begin with "a", the second with "b, a", the third "c, b, a", and so on until "z", and then back until "a" again;
- that Paul Eluard could have saved the life of the surrealist Czech poet Zavis Kalandra but he refused to intervene.
On the other hand, I don't think I'm too comfortable with the term "non-fiction novel", which is very oxymoronic (to use an euphemism for contradiction in terms) even if it was coined by Truman Capote, and I perfectly understand his reasons. Anyway, I prefer Tom Wolfe's "new journalism" to describe this type of novel.
I was amused to discover that I had already spotted many of the tricks David Lodge reveals here that he used in his own novels.
Overall, as usual, and I repeat myself, I love the critic Lodge as much as I love the novelist. And of course, my to-read list is longer now, including Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Fay Weldon, Female Friends, Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust, and Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable.
P.S. More than five years later, I'm proud to say that I read all the books above and not a single one was disappoining, au contraire.
Somehow ironically dull, the book begins with the Beginning, and ends, of course with the Ending, both chapters presenting various ways to introduce and finish a story. In between, we learn about narrative voices, about the form and the structure, the time and the space, the language, the plot and so on, as we did (and forgot!) in high school and college.
I liked a lot of text analyses and, as always, I enjoyed reading Lodge, although I have to confess I'm familiar with many of the notions presented.
However, I've learnt some, too:
- that you can use the term "skaz" "to designate a type of first-person narration that has the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word." (The Catcher in the Rye is an example);
- that another term for poetic prose is fancy prose;
- that there is a form of intertextuality named "missed opportunity" (a piece of information that would have suited a novel had it been discovered while writing it);
- that there is an experimental novel named Alphabetical Africa in which the first chapter contains only words that begin with "a", the second with "b, a", the third "c, b, a", and so on until "z", and then back until "a" again;
- that Paul Eluard could have saved the life of the surrealist Czech poet Zavis Kalandra but he refused to intervene.
On the other hand, I don't think I'm too comfortable with the term "non-fiction novel", which is very oxymoronic (to use an euphemism for contradiction in terms) even if it was coined by Truman Capote, and I perfectly understand his reasons. Anyway, I prefer Tom Wolfe's "new journalism" to describe this type of novel.
I was amused to discover that I had already spotted many of the tricks David Lodge reveals here that he used in his own novels.
Overall, as usual, and I repeat myself, I love the critic Lodge as much as I love the novelist. And of course, my to-read list is longer now, including Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Fay Weldon, Female Friends, Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust, and Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable.
P.S. More than five years later, I'm proud to say that I read all the books above and not a single one was disappoining, au contraire.
April 6, 2018
When I first picked it up some months ago and browsed some pages inside, I didn't want to read it due to its seemingly formidable technical terms in 50 headings but I later changed my mind due to its affirmation as follows, "Bringing to criticism the verve and humour of his own words, David Lodge has provided essential reading for students of literature, aspirant writers, and anyone who wishes to understand how literature works." (back cover) Moreover, Professor Lodge's fame and contribution as a university academic as well as a highly-acclaimed novelist himself have impressed me; his novels include The Picturegoers (1960), The British Museum is Falling Down (1965), Out of the Shelter (1970), to name but a few. His Changing Places (1975) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize; Nice Work won the 1988 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; Paradise News (1991) was regional winner and finalist for the 1996 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and more. (p. i)
I found reading this book arguably rewarding and challenging due to his narratives tinged with appropriate examples; however, I wouldn't claim I understood all he said there, rather I left a number of highly-technical points at that for those who know to digest since I need time to reflect on some issues as far as I can and hope someone out there with his/her charismatic wisdom could shed me some glimpses of light when the time comes.
As we can see from the title, it deals with the art of fiction covering 50 headings (sections as mentioned by Dr Lodge, I wonder if there are more); each one being immediately presented by an exemplified text from a novelist and his/her work. This implies we should read from our familiar novelists and novels first, one of the reasons is that it is easier and more manageable to read about what we have read written by our favorite novelists. In retrospect, I found reading the following 27 headings, their texts, the novelists and the novels twice harder because I had never read them:
1 Beginning (Jane Austen, Ford Maddox Ford)
3 Suspense (Thomas Hardy)
5 The Epistolary Novel (Michael Frayn)
6 Point of View (Henry James)
8 Names (David Lodge, Paul Aster)
12 The Sense of Place (Martin Armis)
14 Introducing a Character (Christopher Isherwood)
15 Surprise (William Makepeace Thackeray)
17 The Reader in the Text (Laurence Sterne)
22 The Experimental Novel (Henry Green)
24 Magic Realism (Milan Kundera)
25 Staying on the Surface (Malcolm Bradbury)
26 Showing and Telling (Henry Fielding)
27 Telling in Different Voices (Fay Weldon)
28 A Sense of the Past (John Fowles)
31 Allegory (Samuel Butler)
33 Coincidence (Henry James)
38 Surrealism (Leonora Carrington)
39 Irony (Arnold Bennett)
40 Motivation (George Eliot)
41 Duration (Donald Barthelme)
42 Implication (William Cooper)
43 The Title (George Gissing)
44 Ideas (Anthony Burgess)
45 The Non-Fiction Novel (Thomas Carlyle)
46 Metafiction (John Barth)
48 Narrative Structure (Leonard Michaels)
As for the remaining 23 I would leave them for those readers interested in tasting themselves as they like since it's time consuming and not challenging to do all; therefore, I would say something on a heading based on the accompanied text with three queries: 1) What does the heading mean? 2) Why is it an art of fiction? and 3) How does it play a role in the exemplary extract taken from the fiction?
The one I mean is No. 35 The Exotic, its two-paragraph excerpt has been taken from Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter (1948) followed by the author's five-paragraph, nearly three-page text. Now I would try to find the answers from the text itself.
1) By "exotic", the author means foreign, not necessarily glamorous or alluring. (p. 159)
2) Since "the exotic in fiction is the mediation of an "abroad" to an audience assumed to be located at "home"" (p. 159); therefore, it has primarily been adopted as an art in fiction by means of depicting anything exotic, that is, things naturally or physically different from what the novelists have long been familiar in their motherland. Moreover, it's interesting to read/hear him mention imperialism, its aftermath and exotic settings inevitably narrated especially in British novels in the last 150 years.
To continue . . .
I found reading this book arguably rewarding and challenging due to his narratives tinged with appropriate examples; however, I wouldn't claim I understood all he said there, rather I left a number of highly-technical points at that for those who know to digest since I need time to reflect on some issues as far as I can and hope someone out there with his/her charismatic wisdom could shed me some glimpses of light when the time comes.
As we can see from the title, it deals with the art of fiction covering 50 headings (sections as mentioned by Dr Lodge, I wonder if there are more); each one being immediately presented by an exemplified text from a novelist and his/her work. This implies we should read from our familiar novelists and novels first, one of the reasons is that it is easier and more manageable to read about what we have read written by our favorite novelists. In retrospect, I found reading the following 27 headings, their texts, the novelists and the novels twice harder because I had never read them:
1 Beginning (Jane Austen, Ford Maddox Ford)
3 Suspense (Thomas Hardy)
5 The Epistolary Novel (Michael Frayn)
6 Point of View (Henry James)
8 Names (David Lodge, Paul Aster)
12 The Sense of Place (Martin Armis)
14 Introducing a Character (Christopher Isherwood)
15 Surprise (William Makepeace Thackeray)
17 The Reader in the Text (Laurence Sterne)
22 The Experimental Novel (Henry Green)
24 Magic Realism (Milan Kundera)
25 Staying on the Surface (Malcolm Bradbury)
26 Showing and Telling (Henry Fielding)
27 Telling in Different Voices (Fay Weldon)
28 A Sense of the Past (John Fowles)
31 Allegory (Samuel Butler)
33 Coincidence (Henry James)
38 Surrealism (Leonora Carrington)
39 Irony (Arnold Bennett)
40 Motivation (George Eliot)
41 Duration (Donald Barthelme)
42 Implication (William Cooper)
43 The Title (George Gissing)
44 Ideas (Anthony Burgess)
45 The Non-Fiction Novel (Thomas Carlyle)
46 Metafiction (John Barth)
48 Narrative Structure (Leonard Michaels)
As for the remaining 23 I would leave them for those readers interested in tasting themselves as they like since it's time consuming and not challenging to do all; therefore, I would say something on a heading based on the accompanied text with three queries: 1) What does the heading mean? 2) Why is it an art of fiction? and 3) How does it play a role in the exemplary extract taken from the fiction?
The one I mean is No. 35 The Exotic, its two-paragraph excerpt has been taken from Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter (1948) followed by the author's five-paragraph, nearly three-page text. Now I would try to find the answers from the text itself.
1) By "exotic", the author means foreign, not necessarily glamorous or alluring. (p. 159)
2) Since "the exotic in fiction is the mediation of an "abroad" to an audience assumed to be located at "home"" (p. 159); therefore, it has primarily been adopted as an art in fiction by means of depicting anything exotic, that is, things naturally or physically different from what the novelists have long been familiar in their motherland. Moreover, it's interesting to read/hear him mention imperialism, its aftermath and exotic settings inevitably narrated especially in British novels in the last 150 years.
To continue . . .
May 20, 2015
I'm not in the mood for fiction at the moment - I know, that is a ridiculously sweeping thing to say, but really I'm not. I had hoped that in reading this basic introduction to literary criticism that I might have a surge of wonder and excitement, see all that I was missing, and rush out and bury myself in a novel.
It was not to be. I huffed and puffed my way from chapter to chapter, feeling irritated and disgruntled. Firstly by the extracts from various novels - none of which appealed - and then by the analysis of each piece. It all felt flat and boring, and either difficult to understand, or blindingly obvious. (Yes, I was feeling that ratty.) I did learn a bit though, so there is therefore a second star in my rating.
I am just grateful that in this amazing universe of books there is something for everyone, and the world of fiction will be ready and waiting for when I am once again in the mood.
I feel it relevant to mention that most other reviews for this book are incredibly complimentary. I think a lot of my negativity just comes from my current reading preferences.
It was not to be. I huffed and puffed my way from chapter to chapter, feeling irritated and disgruntled. Firstly by the extracts from various novels - none of which appealed - and then by the analysis of each piece. It all felt flat and boring, and either difficult to understand, or blindingly obvious. (Yes, I was feeling that ratty.) I did learn a bit though, so there is therefore a second star in my rating.
I am just grateful that in this amazing universe of books there is something for everyone, and the world of fiction will be ready and waiting for when I am once again in the mood.
I feel it relevant to mention that most other reviews for this book are incredibly complimentary. I think a lot of my negativity just comes from my current reading preferences.
partial-read
April 24, 2023Read about a quarter of this. They were originally newspaper articles, and while 2 or 3 of them have given me some direction for further reading, the treatment of each subject is just far too shallow to be of much use.
July 18, 2015
من با ترجمه ی تحت اللفظیش خیلی مشکل داشتم با اینکه مترجم از ترجمه های موجود در بازار ایراد گرفته بود.
کتاب خوب بود. چیزایی که باید بگه رو گفته بود. مثلا اینکه داستان نویسی یاد دادنی نیست.
کتاب خوب بود. چیزایی که باید بگه رو گفته بود. مثلا اینکه داستان نویسی یاد دادنی نیست.
March 2, 2013
كتاب رائع فى تبويبه عن فن الرواية والقصة . وقد بلغ إعجابى به أن قمت بترجمته الى العربية وصدر عن المشروع القومى للترحمة بالقاهرة.
ويتقسم الكتاب الى خمسين فصلا ، يقوم المؤلف فى كل فصل بتناول ناحية خاصة فى التأليف الروائى . وقد جدد من ذلك التناول ، ففى فصل يعالج اعتماد على الرسائل ، وعلى التليفون ، وهكذا . وهو من الضروريات لكل من يريد التعرف على فنون كتابة الرواية
ويتقسم الكتاب الى خمسين فصلا ، يقوم المؤلف فى كل فصل بتناول ناحية خاصة فى التأليف الروائى . وقد جدد من ذلك التناول ، ففى فصل يعالج اعتماد على الرسائل ، وعلى التليفون ، وهكذا . وهو من الضروريات لكل من يريد التعرف على فنون كتابة الرواية
May 4, 2017
The first of all, that i must say before that i write my review is saying, that "Art of fiction" was written by David Lodge. It is not a bad book. If "Art of fiction" had been a bad book i would have rated with two, or one star.
I must recognise, that David Losdge writes rather well, and he is a perfect Professor of Literary Theory. The topics, which he speaks are well chosen. It is a good point the division of the chapters in fifty chapters. The book is really good translated to spanish.
In my opinion the problem of this book is that some writers, that David Lodge has chosen writers that i like to me very much. All writers of the 19th century, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess (in my opinion is more than the writer of "Orange clockworth. Reverte that he is not catholic loves "Earthly Powers"). Despite not being catholic other writers interest to me really much. I am thinking in the anglo-japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro not reliable narrator. In my shelve i have dead of sadness his novel "The buried giant". Other writers i have not any problems to read for instance William Golding. The disadvantage of this essay is that some writers who choose David Lodge made me sick (i thought that being culturally catholic Lodge would have other references as Evelyn Waugh, but i see that weight more in his heart Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce). In the case of Virginia Woolf (the woman, who accussed Maurice Baring of being irrelevant). In my opinion the irrelevant is her. And her stream of consciousness does not impress to me. James Joyce Ok. i have read his "Dubliners" and it is Ok. But he is one of the most overrated writers of our planet. His "Ulyssess" is a headache to read it :-( (i bet with my father 60 euros that i read it. The book continue in my Shelve). In other case Lodge persuades to me not reading authors that i had in my shelve. I am thinking in Angela Carter whom i expeled of my shelve, and more after David Lodge saying about her and her mates Fay Weldon, and Leanore Cattington (i preffer the Leanore of the Raven). Martin Amis made me to have an instinctive antipathy. Fowles is not a bad writer, but his private life scare away to me. The plot of Malcolm Bradbury`s novel reject to me that the same poles of a magnet. The beggining of "Lolita" is briliant, but we must not forget that it is the story of an incest, pedrastian, a murder. About D.H. Lawrence he had the luck to be borned in England in other country, where the sex had not been taboo he would have died of starving. In France he had been other pornography writer. Lawrence saved because the society of his time was very puritan. Besides there are writers, who write better than him. I thought in the writer Megan Maxwell.
The main problem of this book is that this book surrended to the political correction. We are slaves of the critics, who raised these writers to the secular shrine. I missed more names G.K. Chesterton (in words of Paul Johnson he was expelled of the English writers as the fairies, and Elves, despite being the master of Kafka, Karel Capek, or Borges) i missed Tolkien, I missed Maurice Baring, i missed Robert Hugh Benson, Nancy Mitford, Sheila Kaye Smith, Somerset Maugham the list is incredibly long.
For this reason the literary guides are not infallible. They can help us, but they are not the Holy Bible. We must find a balance between the critics, and the popular taste (because it has not ever the public taste is the best. Our age is the bitter fruit and the evidence that i say it. It is true). The thing is looking for the blessed an aristotlelic middle point. Perhaps for somebody my review might be very hard, but the lecture of Benjamin Dexter/Graham Greene in "The third man" is harder than my review, and the fair anger of the spanish writer Juan Manuel de Prada in his last novel "White blackbird, black swan", where at the beggining of his novel he whips to the authors aclaimed by the critics. They are bored, i fear it.
I want to conclude my review lighting to the Goodreads Users, saying something good. I love the references of David Lodge to their novels, and i recomend "Art of fiction" to future writers. However continue trusting in their favorite writers. Nobody speak about Mika Waltari, Louis de Wohl, and Maxence van der Meersch, and i love them. The proffessor of a friend said to her "That we were the fruit of our fantasies".
............................................................................................................................................................................
Lo primero de todo, que debo decir antes de empezar esta crítica es decir, que "El arte de la ficción" de David Lodge. No es un mal libro. Si lo fuera no le habría puesto tres estrellas, sino una estrella, o dos.
Debo reconocer, que David Lodge escribe muy bien, y es un profesor de Teoría Literaria muy competente. Los temas, que trata están muy bien escogidos, así como también es un acierto la división, que ha hecho en 50 capítulos. El libro, está muy bien traducido.
A mí modo de ver el problema del libro es que algunos escritores me gustaban los del siglo XIX, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess. Otros pese a no ser católico tengo interés por leerles, como Kazuo Ishiguro. Ahí tengo en mi estantería muerto de aburrimiento "El gigante enterrado". Otros no me incomodaba leerles como William Golding. El talón de aquiles de Lodge es que muchos de los escritores de David Lodge me producen abierta repulsión. Pienso en Virginia Woolf (la mujer, que acusó a Maurice Baring de ser superficial). Es curioso, pero a mí es ella la que me parece superficial, y su flujo de la conciencia. No me inspira mucho confianza. James Joyce vale que le he leído, y aprobé sus "Dublineses" (que son correctitos), pero es que uno de los escritores más sobrevalorados del planeta, y su "Ulises" es un dolor de cabeza leerlo. En algunos casos el libro de Lodge, me ha disuadido de leer a otros escritores que tenía en mi estantería pienso en Angela Carter, a la que he apartado de mi estantería, después de lo que dice Lodge de ella, y de sus compañeras Fay Weldon, y Eleonora Cattington. Martin Amis es un escritor, que inspira en mí una antipatía instintiva. Fowles no sería un mal escritor el problema es que su vida privada me retrae. El argumento de la novela de Macolm Bradbury me repelía como un imán. Estoy de acuerdo que el arranque de Nabokov es brillante, pero no nos engañemos es la historia de una pedrastia, un incesto, y un asesinato. Que voy a decir de D.H. Lawrence, que tuvo la suerte de nacer en Inglaterra si hubiera nacido en una sociedad, que se escandalizase menos del sexo se hubiera muerto de hambre. Lo que le salvó fue el puritanismo de la sociedad en la que vivía. En Francia hubiera sido un escritor más de literatura pornográfica, y no se le consideraría una figura para este tipo de literatura pueden leer a mi amiga Megan Maxwell, que lo hace mejor, que Lawrence.
Ahí está el problema del libro, que se ha rendido a la corrección política, y ha elevado a los altares a los ad lateres proclamados por los popes y críticos que han modelado el pensamiento del siglo XX (por desgracia). Se echan de menos nombres, que eran muy populares, aunque hoy no nos digan nada el gran G.K. Chesterton (en palabras de Paul Johnson relegado y expulsado de las universidades británicas, pese a ser el maestro de Kafka, K. Capek, y Jorge Luis Borges). Echó de menos a J.R.R. Tolkien, echó de menos al valiente Baring. Echó de menos a Robert Hugh Benson. Echó de menos a Nancy Mitford, echó de menos a Sheila Kaye Smith. Echó de menos que se tratase otras novelas de Burgess. Echó de menos a Somerset Maugham, y a tantos otros.
Por eso yo pienso, que las guías literarias pueden ayudarnos, pero no son la Biblia, ni tienen la infalibilidad. Creo, que hay que buscar un equilibrio entre la crítica, y los gustos populares (porque no siempre lo que le gusta al público es bueno, y prueba de ello es lo que compra actualmente). La cosa está en buscar el bendito, y aristotélico punto medio. A Algunos les podrá parecer duro mi análisis, pero no menos duro, que la conferencia que BenjaminDexter/GrahamGreene pronunció contra sus contemporáneos en el "Tercer hombre", ni la justa ira de mi adorado Juan Manuel de Prada en su brillante novela "Mirlo blanco, cisne negro", dónde al principio fustiga a los autores consagrados por la crítica actual, y que son aburridísimos, me temo.
Con todo quiero finalizar mi crítica insuflando un poco de luz (diciendo algo bueno) me gusta las acotaciones de David Lodge a sus novelas, y recomiendo leer este libro a futuros escritores en ciernes. Con todo sigan confiando en sus escritores predilectos. Ya nadie habla de Mika Waltari, Louis de Wohl, o Maxence van der Meersch, y a mí me encantan. Como diría el profesor de una amiga mía "somos el fruto de nuestras fantasías".
I must recognise, that David Losdge writes rather well, and he is a perfect Professor of Literary Theory. The topics, which he speaks are well chosen. It is a good point the division of the chapters in fifty chapters. The book is really good translated to spanish.
In my opinion the problem of this book is that some writers, that David Lodge has chosen writers that i like to me very much. All writers of the 19th century, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess (in my opinion is more than the writer of "Orange clockworth. Reverte that he is not catholic loves "Earthly Powers"). Despite not being catholic other writers interest to me really much. I am thinking in the anglo-japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro not reliable narrator. In my shelve i have dead of sadness his novel "The buried giant". Other writers i have not any problems to read for instance William Golding. The disadvantage of this essay is that some writers who choose David Lodge made me sick (i thought that being culturally catholic Lodge would have other references as Evelyn Waugh, but i see that weight more in his heart Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce). In the case of Virginia Woolf (the woman, who accussed Maurice Baring of being irrelevant). In my opinion the irrelevant is her. And her stream of consciousness does not impress to me. James Joyce Ok. i have read his "Dubliners" and it is Ok. But he is one of the most overrated writers of our planet. His "Ulyssess" is a headache to read it :-( (i bet with my father 60 euros that i read it. The book continue in my Shelve). In other case Lodge persuades to me not reading authors that i had in my shelve. I am thinking in Angela Carter whom i expeled of my shelve, and more after David Lodge saying about her and her mates Fay Weldon, and Leanore Cattington (i preffer the Leanore of the Raven). Martin Amis made me to have an instinctive antipathy. Fowles is not a bad writer, but his private life scare away to me. The plot of Malcolm Bradbury`s novel reject to me that the same poles of a magnet. The beggining of "Lolita" is briliant, but we must not forget that it is the story of an incest, pedrastian, a murder. About D.H. Lawrence he had the luck to be borned in England in other country, where the sex had not been taboo he would have died of starving. In France he had been other pornography writer. Lawrence saved because the society of his time was very puritan. Besides there are writers, who write better than him. I thought in the writer Megan Maxwell.
The main problem of this book is that this book surrended to the political correction. We are slaves of the critics, who raised these writers to the secular shrine. I missed more names G.K. Chesterton (in words of Paul Johnson he was expelled of the English writers as the fairies, and Elves, despite being the master of Kafka, Karel Capek, or Borges) i missed Tolkien, I missed Maurice Baring, i missed Robert Hugh Benson, Nancy Mitford, Sheila Kaye Smith, Somerset Maugham the list is incredibly long.
For this reason the literary guides are not infallible. They can help us, but they are not the Holy Bible. We must find a balance between the critics, and the popular taste (because it has not ever the public taste is the best. Our age is the bitter fruit and the evidence that i say it. It is true). The thing is looking for the blessed an aristotlelic middle point. Perhaps for somebody my review might be very hard, but the lecture of Benjamin Dexter/Graham Greene in "The third man" is harder than my review, and the fair anger of the spanish writer Juan Manuel de Prada in his last novel "White blackbird, black swan", where at the beggining of his novel he whips to the authors aclaimed by the critics. They are bored, i fear it.
I want to conclude my review lighting to the Goodreads Users, saying something good. I love the references of David Lodge to their novels, and i recomend "Art of fiction" to future writers. However continue trusting in their favorite writers. Nobody speak about Mika Waltari, Louis de Wohl, and Maxence van der Meersch, and i love them. The proffessor of a friend said to her "That we were the fruit of our fantasies".
............................................................................................................................................................................
Lo primero de todo, que debo decir antes de empezar esta crítica es decir, que "El arte de la ficción" de David Lodge. No es un mal libro. Si lo fuera no le habría puesto tres estrellas, sino una estrella, o dos.
Debo reconocer, que David Lodge escribe muy bien, y es un profesor de Teoría Literaria muy competente. Los temas, que trata están muy bien escogidos, así como también es un acierto la división, que ha hecho en 50 capítulos. El libro, está muy bien traducido.
A mí modo de ver el problema del libro es que algunos escritores me gustaban los del siglo XIX, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess. Otros pese a no ser católico tengo interés por leerles, como Kazuo Ishiguro. Ahí tengo en mi estantería muerto de aburrimiento "El gigante enterrado". Otros no me incomodaba leerles como William Golding. El talón de aquiles de Lodge es que muchos de los escritores de David Lodge me producen abierta repulsión. Pienso en Virginia Woolf (la mujer, que acusó a Maurice Baring de ser superficial). Es curioso, pero a mí es ella la que me parece superficial, y su flujo de la conciencia. No me inspira mucho confianza. James Joyce vale que le he leído, y aprobé sus "Dublineses" (que son correctitos), pero es que uno de los escritores más sobrevalorados del planeta, y su "Ulises" es un dolor de cabeza leerlo. En algunos casos el libro de Lodge, me ha disuadido de leer a otros escritores que tenía en mi estantería pienso en Angela Carter, a la que he apartado de mi estantería, después de lo que dice Lodge de ella, y de sus compañeras Fay Weldon, y Eleonora Cattington. Martin Amis es un escritor, que inspira en mí una antipatía instintiva. Fowles no sería un mal escritor el problema es que su vida privada me retrae. El argumento de la novela de Macolm Bradbury me repelía como un imán. Estoy de acuerdo que el arranque de Nabokov es brillante, pero no nos engañemos es la historia de una pedrastia, un incesto, y un asesinato. Que voy a decir de D.H. Lawrence, que tuvo la suerte de nacer en Inglaterra si hubiera nacido en una sociedad, que se escandalizase menos del sexo se hubiera muerto de hambre. Lo que le salvó fue el puritanismo de la sociedad en la que vivía. En Francia hubiera sido un escritor más de literatura pornográfica, y no se le consideraría una figura para este tipo de literatura pueden leer a mi amiga Megan Maxwell, que lo hace mejor, que Lawrence.
Ahí está el problema del libro, que se ha rendido a la corrección política, y ha elevado a los altares a los ad lateres proclamados por los popes y críticos que han modelado el pensamiento del siglo XX (por desgracia). Se echan de menos nombres, que eran muy populares, aunque hoy no nos digan nada el gran G.K. Chesterton (en palabras de Paul Johnson relegado y expulsado de las universidades británicas, pese a ser el maestro de Kafka, K. Capek, y Jorge Luis Borges). Echó de menos a J.R.R. Tolkien, echó de menos al valiente Baring. Echó de menos a Robert Hugh Benson. Echó de menos a Nancy Mitford, echó de menos a Sheila Kaye Smith. Echó de menos que se tratase otras novelas de Burgess. Echó de menos a Somerset Maugham, y a tantos otros.
Por eso yo pienso, que las guías literarias pueden ayudarnos, pero no son la Biblia, ni tienen la infalibilidad. Creo, que hay que buscar un equilibrio entre la crítica, y los gustos populares (porque no siempre lo que le gusta al público es bueno, y prueba de ello es lo que compra actualmente). La cosa está en buscar el bendito, y aristotélico punto medio. A Algunos les podrá parecer duro mi análisis, pero no menos duro, que la conferencia que BenjaminDexter/GrahamGreene pronunció contra sus contemporáneos en el "Tercer hombre", ni la justa ira de mi adorado Juan Manuel de Prada en su brillante novela "Mirlo blanco, cisne negro", dónde al principio fustiga a los autores consagrados por la crítica actual, y que son aburridísimos, me temo.
Con todo quiero finalizar mi crítica insuflando un poco de luz (diciendo algo bueno) me gusta las acotaciones de David Lodge a sus novelas, y recomiendo leer este libro a futuros escritores en ciernes. Con todo sigan confiando en sus escritores predilectos. Ya nadie habla de Mika Waltari, Louis de Wohl, o Maxence van der Meersch, y a mí me encantan. Como diría el profesor de una amiga mía "somos el fruto de nuestras fantasías".
April 10, 2023
Dans les années, 90, David Lodge, célèbre romancier britannique, a été mandaté pour rédiger une chronique hebdomadaire sur l'art du roman pour un quotidien. Ce sont ses chroniques qui se trouvent rassemblée ici, chacune portant sur un thème particulier. Par exemple: le temps, le réalisme magique, le flux de conscience, le roman d'anticipation, l'ironie, etc. Si ce recueil apprendra peu de choses nouvelles à qui a déjà fait ses études de lettres, le tout est toutefois une petite mine d'or pour le professeur de lettres ou de création. David Lodge étant lui-même enseignant, il explique toujours de façon claire et passionnante un extrait qu'il choisit pour représenter le thème du jour. J'imagine ainsi aisément que plusieurs des chapitres pourraient être un tremplin pour un atelier d'écriture. Certes, il parle de la prose classique, mais quoi de mieux que de connaître ses classiques avant de vouloir se mettre à écrire tout de bon?
January 22, 2022
El arte de la ficción es uno de esos libros que todo aspirante a escritor deberia leer. David Lodge utiliza ejemplos practicos de todo el espectro de la literatura inglesa y norteamericana para explicarnos casualmente muchos elementos narrativos, formas de escribir y en definitiva cosas que tenemos que tener en cuenta (o no) a la hora de organizar nuestros escritos.
Es realmente didactico de manera divertida, nunca se siente como uno de esos interminables tochos de teoria literaria que pueden obligarte a leer en algun curso de escritura creativa y solo por eso merece la pena ser leido.
Eso si, cuidado con los spoilers ya que Lodge destripa cada uno de los libros que usa de ejemplo.
Es realmente didactico de manera divertida, nunca se siente como uno de esos interminables tochos de teoria literaria que pueden obligarte a leer en algun curso de escritura creativa y solo por eso merece la pena ser leido.
Eso si, cuidado con los spoilers ya que Lodge destripa cada uno de los libros que usa de ejemplo.
May 20, 2009
This book originated in the early 1990's when David Lodge was invited by the Independent on Sunday to contribute a series of weekly articles in which he chose a literary topic (such as Beginnings, Mystery, A Sense of Place, Allegory or Endings) and illustrated this with one or two short extracts from relatively well-known novels.
The constraint of a short weekly newspaper column has demanded that Lodge restricts his comments and analysis to the most significant elements of the passages that he has chosen.
As Lodge is not only a highly successful novelist in his own right, but also was a lecturer and professor in English Literature at Birmingham University for almost 30 years, you will be hard pressed to find a more knowledgeable, entertaining or lucid guide to accompany you through some of the landmark works of English fiction, regardless of whether you are an aspiring writer or simply wish to understand how literature works.
The constraint of a short weekly newspaper column has demanded that Lodge restricts his comments and analysis to the most significant elements of the passages that he has chosen.
As Lodge is not only a highly successful novelist in his own right, but also was a lecturer and professor in English Literature at Birmingham University for almost 30 years, you will be hard pressed to find a more knowledgeable, entertaining or lucid guide to accompany you through some of the landmark works of English fiction, regardless of whether you are an aspiring writer or simply wish to understand how literature works.
January 16, 2018
This is the book that taught me how to read books. It provides a comprehensive set of critical tools for the everyday reader, and since its examples all tend to make you want to read the books they come from, it also gives you an outstanding syllabus of novels to try them out on. It was a brand-new book when I bought it; now it's dated but still rock-solid. It makes me giddy to think that I could have chosen not to buy it; I think the 25 years since would have gone a lot differently.
July 26, 2020
Notes:
• Short&accessible chapters that stand entirely on their own
• Accessible writing that’s ideal for short attention spans – and mines is the shortest of them all
• Can be enjoyed from the perspective of a writer or a reader
• Contains general and widely known info with the occasional nugget that’ll give you a lightbulb moment
• I like to think it'll make me a better writer without, you know, practicing writing like one should
Rating: 3.75 stars
• Short&accessible chapters that stand entirely on their own
• Accessible writing that’s ideal for short attention spans – and mines is the shortest of them all
• Can be enjoyed from the perspective of a writer or a reader
• Contains general and widely known info with the occasional nugget that’ll give you a lightbulb moment
• I like to think it'll make me a better writer without, you know, practicing writing like one should
Rating: 3.75 stars
October 26, 2020
من این کتاب رو طی دو ماه هر روز بعد از حموم تو مدتی که منتظر خشک شدن بودم خوندم، و دومین کتابی بود که این جوری خوندم و روش خوبی برای استفاده از زمانهای مردهاس.
کتاب درباره داستاننویسی زیاد نداریم. این یکی هم در ۵۰ فصل دید کلی و مناسبی به خواننده میده، اما خیلی سریع از موضوعات میگذره و ناکافیه. البته برای آشنایی اولیه مناسبه و ممکنه سوالاتی ایجاد کنه که منجر به پیگیری و خوندن منابع مرتبط با اون سوالها بشه. در مجموع کتاب بدی نیست و به خوندنش میارزه.
کتاب درباره داستاننویسی زیاد نداریم. این یکی هم در ۵۰ فصل دید کلی و مناسبی به خواننده میده، اما خیلی سریع از موضوعات میگذره و ناکافیه. البته برای آشنایی اولیه مناسبه و ممکنه سوالاتی ایجاد کنه که منجر به پیگیری و خوندن منابع مرتبط با اون سوالها بشه. در مجموع کتاب بدی نیست و به خوندنش میارزه.
August 16, 2017
If you are looking for a book who teaches you the language of literature, the craftwork, so as to improve both your reading and your writing, THIS is the book you want.
Based upon classic novels in the English Language, David Lodge shows you the different tools a writer serves upon to create fiction. I just LOVED it.
Based upon classic novels in the English Language, David Lodge shows you the different tools a writer serves upon to create fiction. I just LOVED it.
January 21, 2018
كتاب نقدى مهم لمحبى الرواية وجامع شبه شامل لاجناس الرواية ولاعلام الكتابة فى فصول محكمة مركزة بسيطة تعطى لك التعريف والشرح بطريقة مبسطة يستطع حتى القارىء العادى الاستمتاع به وبالامثلة المجتزئة من الروايات العالمية وبترجمة دقيقة واضحة .
August 12, 2007
Got me through college, man. Eventually I got my dog-eared copy signed by the man himself when he gave a talk at Warwick Uni.
April 24, 2022
This is a remarkably accessible book of literary criticism that illuminates the craft of writing in easily digestible chapters; I don’t think any chapter was over 6 or 7 pages, and I generally read about four at a time. Overall, reading this reminded me of being in some of my favorite literary analysis classes in university, which is very high praise from me.
I had no idea who Lodge was prior to being given this book, but I quickly grew to enjoy his prose and his insight on literature, told with intelligence and humor, that spans every facet of the novel one can think of; beginnings, endings, structure, names, styles, lists, even (what seems to be now antiquated!) the device of the telephone. He begins each chapter with a passage or two from novels and then discusses why - and more interestingly - how - the author achieves each of the elements he highlights.
What is most impressive to me, perhaps, is that for a book about literature published in 1992, Lodge selects texts from male and female writers. Woolf, the Brontes, Carter, Carrington, Austen, Spark, and Eliot are given equal respect (and close to equal analysis) as Tolstoy, Joyce, Aster, Twain, Nabokov, Orwell, and Hemingway.
But, since this is a text on literary criticism, I don’t feel it would be an honest review if I failed to mention how flagrantly Lodge omits authors who aren’t white; Ishiguro and Shange are the only non-caucasian writers I recall him mentioning, and in 1992, neglecting to mention Morrison, Baldwin, Hurston, Walker (whose “The Color Purple” would have been a far better example to use in the epistolary novel section than the one he selected, not to mention to use in a chapter on the use of dialect), Lorde, and so many others is pretty glaring. This is my only criticism in an otherwise superb collection about the beauty and magic of books.
I had no idea who Lodge was prior to being given this book, but I quickly grew to enjoy his prose and his insight on literature, told with intelligence and humor, that spans every facet of the novel one can think of; beginnings, endings, structure, names, styles, lists, even (what seems to be now antiquated!) the device of the telephone. He begins each chapter with a passage or two from novels and then discusses why - and more interestingly - how - the author achieves each of the elements he highlights.
What is most impressive to me, perhaps, is that for a book about literature published in 1992, Lodge selects texts from male and female writers. Woolf, the Brontes, Carter, Carrington, Austen, Spark, and Eliot are given equal respect (and close to equal analysis) as Tolstoy, Joyce, Aster, Twain, Nabokov, Orwell, and Hemingway.
But, since this is a text on literary criticism, I don’t feel it would be an honest review if I failed to mention how flagrantly Lodge omits authors who aren’t white; Ishiguro and Shange are the only non-caucasian writers I recall him mentioning, and in 1992, neglecting to mention Morrison, Baldwin, Hurston, Walker (whose “The Color Purple” would have been a far better example to use in the epistolary novel section than the one he selected, not to mention to use in a chapter on the use of dialect), Lorde, and so many others is pretty glaring. This is my only criticism in an otherwise superb collection about the beauty and magic of books.
June 21, 2021
Un libro al que siempre habrá que volver. Definitivamente un libro de consulta y manoseo. De lenguaje diáfano, accesible y cercano su autor quien es un reconocido escritor en su país, sobre todo por un tipo de novela que tiene más éxito en el mundo anglosajón que en el castellano, nos invita a una conversación de literatura, una aproximación a los tropos que maneja el arte de escribir.
Aunque me gustó mucho, falla en el detalle de utilizar solo ejemplo de novelas escritas en inglés. Casi siempre, por no decir siempre el mundo anglófono se olvida del mundo hispanoamericano colmado de tantas riquezas.
Un consejo, si quieren leer este libro déjenlo para el final después de leer manuales tan válidos escritos en español como los de Cortázar o Gabriel García Márquez, por solo mencionar algunos.
Aunque me gustó mucho, falla en el detalle de utilizar solo ejemplo de novelas escritas en inglés. Casi siempre, por no decir siempre el mundo anglófono se olvida del mundo hispanoamericano colmado de tantas riquezas.
Un consejo, si quieren leer este libro déjenlo para el final después de leer manuales tan válidos escritos en español como los de Cortázar o Gabriel García Márquez, por solo mencionar algunos.
May 3, 2019
I've only ever read one of David Lodge's novels - The British Museum Is Falling Down - but I'll be seeking out more, because I really enjoyed this collection of columns on the art and history of the novel. If I can retain all I learned, it will improve both my experience as a reader and my ability as a writer.
June 3, 2022
Più che un saggio di narratologia è un minuscolo compendio degli aspetti che caratterizzano un testo di narrativa, un libro da leggere a spizzichi, quando serve. Lodge ha uno stile spiccato e diretto che arriva a qualsiasi lettore, le sue analisi sugli estratti romanzeschi sono brevi e coincise, ma questo testo rimane troppo in superfice per chi mastica almeno un po' di critica letteraria. Anzi, è un testo apprezzabile di più da chi cerca un manualetto di scrittura creativa da consultare.
August 29, 2023
IM FREE!!!!!!! WORST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE
March 16, 2016
The cover of this collection of essays features a striking image by Van Gogh of a woman reading a novel. Her surroundings are strongly lit by a bright light, while she herself, her face especially, is in shadow (you can still see the anxiety in her face); the only blemish for me is the clumsily rendered fingers of her left hand.
In a way this perfectly captures the impact of this non-fiction study: a lot of light is thrown on how British and American writers achieve the effects that are found in their works, but we are mainly in the dark as to how ordinary readers themselves may react. (The critics however lapped it up, if the cover quotes are typical.) All that we can be sure of is what the essayist thinks of the extracts he discusses: it is up to each reader to make up their minds whether that works for them individually.
Some of these pieces were written for the Independent on Sunday as early as 1991, and my worry was that after much ink has flowed from pens and printers over the intervening quarter-century some of his observations might be a little dated. Not a bit of it. Fifty pieces cover the lifetime of the English novel, from Laurence Sterne to Fay Weldon, Jane Austen to Anthony Burgess, Thomas Carlyle to Milan Kundera; fifty article-length discussions revolve around topics as various as Suspense and Interior Monologue, Teenage Skaz and Magic Realism, the Unreliable Narrator and the Non-Fiction Novel, the Epistolary Novel and the Telephone.
Lodge’s approach is to quote a passage or two from one or more books, each of which is designed to illustrate the technique he’s introducing, before going on to analyse and comment on how each extract works. Along the way he slips in specific literary terms like synecdoche or metafiction, defamiliarization or aporia, all without losing the novice reader because he shows those terms working in context. Whether it’s how to structure a novel (Chapters or Narrative Structure), or genre (Suspense, Imagining the Future, Allegory, Surrealism), or style (Showing and Telling, Point of View, Irony), Lodge is always knowledgeable, discursive and entertaining.
I enjoyed this book about novels immensely, often reading two or three sections at a time without a sense of overload. Fittingly the first topic is Beginning and the last — for which I felt a pang of regret that all was nearly over — is Ending; Austen is the principal author bookending the collection. Penguin continued to publish this as recently as 2011 so clearly felt that The Art of Fiction was still relevant twenty years later.
You won’t feel embarrassed caught reading this, not perhaps like Van Gogh’s young female reader. As Vincent himself writes in a little note accompanying a sketch of his 1888 painting, “in her hand she holds a yellow book”. In the late 19th century illicit French novels sported yellow covers, a fact that led to a famous British magazine saucily calling itself The Yellow Book from 1894 to 1897, even though its contents dealt with high art and literature. Still, it did achieve a posthumous kind of notoriety from the fact that both Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley contributed to it.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-fiction
In a way this perfectly captures the impact of this non-fiction study: a lot of light is thrown on how British and American writers achieve the effects that are found in their works, but we are mainly in the dark as to how ordinary readers themselves may react. (The critics however lapped it up, if the cover quotes are typical.) All that we can be sure of is what the essayist thinks of the extracts he discusses: it is up to each reader to make up their minds whether that works for them individually.
Some of these pieces were written for the Independent on Sunday as early as 1991, and my worry was that after much ink has flowed from pens and printers over the intervening quarter-century some of his observations might be a little dated. Not a bit of it. Fifty pieces cover the lifetime of the English novel, from Laurence Sterne to Fay Weldon, Jane Austen to Anthony Burgess, Thomas Carlyle to Milan Kundera; fifty article-length discussions revolve around topics as various as Suspense and Interior Monologue, Teenage Skaz and Magic Realism, the Unreliable Narrator and the Non-Fiction Novel, the Epistolary Novel and the Telephone.
Lodge’s approach is to quote a passage or two from one or more books, each of which is designed to illustrate the technique he’s introducing, before going on to analyse and comment on how each extract works. Along the way he slips in specific literary terms like synecdoche or metafiction, defamiliarization or aporia, all without losing the novice reader because he shows those terms working in context. Whether it’s how to structure a novel (Chapters or Narrative Structure), or genre (Suspense, Imagining the Future, Allegory, Surrealism), or style (Showing and Telling, Point of View, Irony), Lodge is always knowledgeable, discursive and entertaining.
I enjoyed this book about novels immensely, often reading two or three sections at a time without a sense of overload. Fittingly the first topic is Beginning and the last — for which I felt a pang of regret that all was nearly over — is Ending; Austen is the principal author bookending the collection. Penguin continued to publish this as recently as 2011 so clearly felt that The Art of Fiction was still relevant twenty years later.
You won’t feel embarrassed caught reading this, not perhaps like Van Gogh’s young female reader. As Vincent himself writes in a little note accompanying a sketch of his 1888 painting, “in her hand she holds a yellow book”. In the late 19th century illicit French novels sported yellow covers, a fact that led to a famous British magazine saucily calling itself The Yellow Book from 1894 to 1897, even though its contents dealt with high art and literature. Still, it did achieve a posthumous kind of notoriety from the fact that both Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley contributed to it.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-fiction
Displaying 1 - 30 of 260 reviews