A generous, witty, and exuberant teacher inspires writers to “know more and feel more.”
A jam-packed book of advice for would-be writers.
Poynter Institute senior scholar Clark (The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing, 2017, etc.) has become something of a guru when it comes to how-to writing books. Written in his usual easygoing, conversational, and encouraging style, his latest is a compilation of writing advice from more than 50 of his favorite books about writing. Covering a wide range of topics, including language and craft, voice and style, storytelling and character, and rhetoric and audience, the author focuses on one or two writing lessons from each book. In each chapter, Clark also provides a pedagogical “Tool Box” of ideas and suggestions and “Lessons” for students to try out: “Read a lot and write a lot”; “Write Up to your readers, not Down.” The book’s title comes from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s On the Art of Writing (1916), in which the author suggested, “Draft, purge, murder. Before you murder that darling, you must create it.” Clark argues that William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style is the “great-granddaddy” of all books on writing. For “millions of reluctant writers,” it told them that the “writing craft is not an act of magic, but the applied use of both rules and tools.” Besides the old standards, there are some nice surprises—e.g., George Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric, a “must read” that “was published in a significant year: 1776.” Stephen King’s “odd bit of advice” in On Writing—to read “bad writing so you can learn what not to write”—is practical and wise. Clark deftly mixes writing advice with personal memoir and toots his own horn in an appendix that includes summaries of his own books, including Writing Tools—“more than 200,000 copies have been sold in several formats.”
A generous, witty, and exuberant teacher inspires writers to “know more and feel more.”Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-48188-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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