Alison’s prose is potent and lush, her enthusiasm infectious. One of her more seductive ideas is the notion of possible 'correlations between kinds of stories and certain patterns,' as when reflective first-person novels adopt the spiral. "Alison’s close readings can be exhilarating. Praise For This Book A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 | A Poets & Writers Best Books for Writers It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let’s leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions.
Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her “museum of specimens” include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison.
Sebald’s Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc–or, in nature, wave. But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculosexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Alison asserts that the best stories follow patterns in nature, and by defining these new styles she offers writers the freedom to explore but with enough guidance to thrive.” ―Maris Kreizman, VultureĪ Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 | A Poets & Writers Best Books for WritersĪs Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: “For centuries there’s been one path through fiction we’re most likely to travel― one we’re actually told to follow―and that’s the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides. “How lovely to discover a book on the craft of writing that is also fun to read.
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