As a motorcycle racer, chemist, writer I was never cautious. Gardner's evaluations of his fellow writers are equally flat-out. This collection brings together Gardner's essays on literature. He explains how he separates novelistic wheat from chaff, genuine fiction from fakery. Gardner examines contemporary writers - Bellow, Nabokov, Roth, Cheever, Woiwode, Oates, Updike, and other major authors. In other essays Gardner examines influential storytelling that ranges from King Arthur to Walt Disney. Here we see the skill of some of America's greatest writers laid bare by a fellow craftsman.

    With millions of copies sold, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is the style manual of choice for writers, editors, students, educators, and professionals in psychology, sociology, business, economics, nursing, social work, and justice administration, and other disciplines in which effective communication with words and data is fundamental.In addition to providing clear guidance on grammar, the mechanics of writing, and APA style, the Publication Manual offers an authoritative and easy-to-use reference and citation system and comprehensive coverage of the treatment of numbers, metrication, statistical and mathematical data, tables, and figures for use in writing, reports, or presentations. The new edition has been revised and updated to include: The latest guidelines and examples for referencing electronic and online sources New and revised guidelines for submitting papers electronically Improved guidelines for avoiding plagiarism Simplified formatting guidelines for writers using up-to-date word-processing software All new guidelines for presenting case studies Improved guidelines for the construction of tables Updates on copyright and permissions issues for writers New reference examples for audiovisual media and patents An expanded and improved index for quick and easy access Writers, scholars, and professionals will also find: New guidelines on how to choose text, tables, or figures to present data Guidelines for writing cover letters for submitting articles for publication, plus a sample letter Expanded guidelines on the retention of raw data New advice on establishing written agreements for the use of shared data New information on the responsibilities of co-authors New and experienced readers alike will find the 5th Edition a complete resource for writing, presenting, or publishing with clarity and persuasiveness.Approximately 400 pages

    Bellow. Strauss. Friedman. The University of Chicago has been the home of some of the most important thinkers of the modern age. But perhaps no name has been spoken with more respect than Turabian. The dissertation secretary at Chicago for decades, Kate Turabian literally wrote the book on the successful completion and submission of the student paper. Her Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, created from her years of experience with research projects across all fields, has sold more than seven million copies since it was first published in 1937.Now, with this seventh edition, Turabian’s Manual has undergone its most extensive revision, ensuring that it will remain the most valuable handbook for writers at every level—from first-year undergraduates, to dissertation writers apprehensively submitting final manuscripts, to senior scholars who may be old hands at research and writing but less familiar with new media citation styles. Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and the late Wayne C. Booth—the gifted team behind The Craft of Research—and the University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff combined their wide-ranging expertise to remake this classic resource. They preserve Turabian’s clear and practical advice while fully embracing the new modes of research, writing, and source citation brought about by the age of the Internet.Booth, Colomb, and Williams significantly expand the scope of previous editions by creating a guide, generous in length and tone, to the art of research and writing. Growing out of the authors’ best-selling Craft of Research, this new section provides students with an overview of every step of the research and writing process, from formulating the right questions to reading critically to building arguments and revising drafts. This leads naturally to the second part of the Manual for Writers, which offers an authoritative overview of citation practices in scholarly writing, as well as detailed information on the two main citation styles (“notes-bibliography” and “author-date”). This section has been fully revised to reflect the recommendations of the fifteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and to present an expanded array of source types and updated examples, including guidance on citing electronic sources.The final section of the book treats issues of style—the details that go into making a strong paper. Here writers will find advice on a wide range of topics, including punctuation, table formatting, and use of quotations. The appendix draws together everything writers need to know about formatting research papers, theses, and dissertations and preparing them for submission. This material has been thoroughly vetted by dissertation officials at colleges and universities across the country.This seventh edition of Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is a classic reference revised for a new age. It is tailored to a new generation of writers using tools its original author could not have imagined—while retaining the clarity and authority that generations of scholars have come to associate with the name Turabian.

    A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like? The collection of fragmented images on a page - a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so - and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved - or reviled - literary figures.In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature - he thinks of himself first, and foremost, as a reader - into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading.

    I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. —Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. Many of us have never been taught to read or write poetry and think of it as a mysterious and intimidating form. Or, if we have been taught, we remember uncomfortable silence when an English teacher invited the class to "respond" to a poem. In The Ode Less Travelled, Fry sets out to correct this problem by giving aspiring poets the tools and confidence they need to write poetry for pleasure. Fry is a wonderfully engaging teacher and writer of poetry himself, and he explains the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. His enjoyable exercises and witty insights introduce the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics. Aspiring poets will learn to write a sonnet, on ode, a villanelle, a ballad, and a haiku, among others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of, but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try. BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise: “Delightfully erudite, charming and soundly pedagogical guide to poetic form… Fry has created an invaluable and highly enjoyable reference book.” —Publishers Weekly “A smart, sane and entertaining return to the basics… If you like Fry’s comic manner… this book has a lot of charm… People entirely fresh to the subject could do worse than stick with his cheerful leadership.” —The Telegraph (UK) “…intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.” —Observer (UK) "If you learn how to write a sonnet, and Fry shows you how, you may or may not make a poem. But you will unlock the stored wisdom of the form itself." —Grey Gowrie, The Spectator (UK) “…intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.” —Observer (UK)

    The end point of a story determines its meaning, and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration of a plot. Silber uses wide-ranging examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chinua Achebe, and Arundhati Roy, among others, to illustrate five key ways in which time unfolds in fiction. In clear-eyed prose, Silber elucidates a tricky but vital aspect of the art of fiction.

    Examining heroic myths in the light of modern psychology, it considers not only the patterns and stages of mythology but also its relevance to our lives today--and to the life of any person seeking a fully realized existence.Myth, according to Campbell, is the projection of a culture's dreams onto a large screen; Campbell's book, like Star Wars, the film it helped inspire, is an exploration of the big-picture moments from the stage that is our world. It is a must-have resource for both experienced students of mythology and the explorer just beginning to approach myth as a source of knowledge.

    Its hands-on, completely accessible approach walks writers through each stage of the creative process, from the initial triggering idea to the revision of the final manuscript. It is unique in combing the three main aspects of creative writing instruction: process (finding inspiration, getting ideas on the page), craft (specific techniques like characterization), and anthology (learning by reading masters of the form). Succinct, clear definitions of basic terms of fiction are accompanied by examples, including excerpts from masterpieces of short fiction and essays as well as contemporary novels. A special highlight is Alice LaPlante's systematic debunking of many of the so-called rules of creative writing. This book is perfect for writers working alone as well as for creative writing classes, both introductory and advanced.

    With characteristic vigor and iconoclasm, Pound illustrates his precepts with exhibits meticulously chosen from the classics, and the concluding “Treatise on Meter” provides an illuminating essay for anyone aspiring to read and write poetry. The ABC of Reading emphasizes Pound's ability to discover neglected and unknown genius, distinguish originals from imitations, and open new avenues in literature for our time.

    Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. But this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose. Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years.This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.

    Imperative reading for all teachers and students of writing.”—ChoiceThis humorous and accessible classic on style calls for the return of wordplay and delight to writing instruction. Richard Lanham argues that many tomes on writing, with their trio of platitudes—clarity, plainness, sincerity—lie “upon the spirit like wet cardboard.”"People seldom write to be clear. They have designs on their fellow men. Pure prose is as rare as pure virtue, and for the same reasons…The Books [Lanham’s term for misguided composition textbooks], written for a man and world yet unfallen, depict a ludicrous process like this: 'I have an idea. I want to present this gift to my fellow man. I fix this thought clearly in mind. I follow the rules. Out comes a prose that gift-wraps thought in transparent paper.' If this sounds like a travesty, it’s because it is one. Yet it dominates prose instruction in America."—from Chapter 1Richard A. Lanham is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of Rhetorica, Inc., a consulting and editorial services company. He is the author of numerous books on writing, including A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Analyzing Prose, The Electronic Word, and most recently, The Economics of Attention.

    It offers students and other readers a variety of ways to interpret a piece of literature, ranging from historical/biographical and moral/philosophical approaches through the formalist, the psychological, the mythic and archetypal, and into such contemporary perspectives as feminist criticism and cultural studies. The book applies these diverse approaches to the same six classic works--To His Coy Mistress, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, Young Goodman Brown, Everyday Use, and, new to this edition, Frankenstein--showing students how various methods offer different insights and enriching their response to and understanding of the individual works. The fifth edition is enhanced by the addition of Frankenstein, a complex work that lends itself to multiple levels of interpretation and is familiar in both its cinematic and literary forms. The coverage of Frankenstein incorporates material on popular culture--discussions of various fiction, stage, film, and television appearances of the work--as well as several photographs. This edition also features organizational and content changes that bring the volume up-to-date with contemporary literary criticism. Offering a valuable combination of theory and practice, A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, Fifth Edition, is ideal for courses in literary criticism or theory and can also be used in introduction to literature courses.

    In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenologyand processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the Babel problem in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. Withthis provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions. For the long-awaited second edition, Steiner entirely revised the text, added new and expanded notes, and wrote a new preface setting the work in the present context of hermeneutics, poetics, and translation studies. This new edition brings the bibliography up to the present with substantiallyupdated references, including much Russian and Eastern European material. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel, Third Edition is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in theacademy today.

    The text itself is an alphabetical listing of the terms that pertain to literature in English. Now in its eighth edition, it has been used by more than one million students.

    In this text, two well respected poets bring their love of the craft of poetry into a book that teaches as well as inspires. The text also includes exercises, chapter summaries, games, diagrams, illustrations, and 4-color reproductions of great works of art.