Rumpus Exclusive: Three Excerpts from AFTERWORDS
Three exclusive excerpts from …AFTERWORDS, a new series of distinctive commentaries on great works of contemporary literature from our friends at Fiction Advocate!
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Posts Tagged: jonathan russell clark
Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be
We’ve all lent a book to someone and never gotten it back—and most of us have probably been on the other end of that exchange as well. For Read It Forward, Jonathan Russell Clark writes a manifesto against the somewhat sacred practice of book lending and borrowing (and no, he doesn’t like libraries either).
...moreCelebrating Borges’s Dual Natures
Maybe there are two Borges in the world, existing at the same time. One is the fiction writer we know, the lover of paradox, the trickster, the forger, the artist who describes fantastical events with straight-faced authority, using the syntax and tone of academia; and then there is this other Borges, the critic, who writes reasonably and […]
...moreThinking about the Past as If It Were the Future
Chuck Klosterman’s new book, But What If We’re Wrong, theorizes how today will appear in the history books. But how will his own work hold up? The further in the future you peer the more impossible it is to anticipate what that future will look like or even what its denizens believe about the basic principles […]
...moreA Graveyard on the Shelf
Jutting out from the depths are exactly what I was looking for: bookmarks. Rows upon rows of them, in fact. But instead of alleviating my current need, the image fills me with a brief—but very real—dread. Over at Read It Forward, Jonathan Russell Clark writes about the dreadful feeling of considering bookmarks as tombstones of […]
...moreGot to Pg. 359 and Stopped Reading
So why has Infinite Jest, supposedly such an influential novel, become a paper weight, a talking point, a bench-mark of high- and low-brow intellectuality? Why has no one (or, more accurately, why does everyone think that no one) has actually read the thing? Jonathan Russell Clark has something to say: a little slap on the […]
...moreConsider the Footnote
Examining yet another fundamental element of text, Jonathan Russell Clark writes an essay “on the fine art of the footnote” over at Lit Hub.
...moreThe Hermits
For Lit Hub, Jonathan Russell Clark examines our fascination with reclusive writers.
...moreStop Worrying About What Comes Next
At The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark analyzes several last sentences from well-known novels by Hemingway, Tolstoy, Morrison, and Roth. He pays particular attention to the craftsmanship necessary to write these sentences, and considers how last sentences work to reinforce larger themes within a novel: For writers, the last sentences aren’t about reader responsibility at all — it’s […]
...moreFor the Love of Chapters
What I’m talking about instead are the ways in which chapters are not merely components of a narrative’s foundational architecture but also part of its aesthetic, i.e., more like those imposing Ionic columns that both hold up the facade and immensely add to the overall quality of the building. Over at The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark considers how […]
...moreThis Incredible Writer and Thinker and Person
For The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark covers Little Brown’s new The David Foster Wallace Reader, touching upon what he calls the writer’s “metanonfiction.” He also discusses, among other things, his hopes for the volume: … if this “Reader” accomplishes anything, it would be wonderful if some new Wallace fans emerged from its publication. For Wallace […]
...moreA Symposium on Dialogue
For The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark draws quotes from a number of writing books—among them, Stephen King’s On Writing and Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel—and creates a symposium on the art of dialogue.
...moreThe Art of The Novel
The approach coupled with the scope (covering, as it does, a huge swath of time) results in maybe the most complete history of the novel in English ever produced. Over at The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark reviews “The Novel: a Biography” by Michael Schmidt, and inevitably his review turns into a noteworthy essay on writing […]
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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
Murakami’s depiction of the murdered female sex object at the center of his new novel is not only sexist and irresponsible. It’s also lazy writing.
...moreThe Art of Homage
But what if your entire book is based on another one? What if a certain piece of information (in the cases of these books, a writer or a specific novel) is foundational to your text? How, then, should you proceed? Should you explain the referenced work so that those unfamiliar with it can enjoy your […]
...moreWord of the Day: Logodaedaly
(n.); cunning in words; skill in adorning speech; the arbitrary or capricious coinage of words; from late Latin and Greek, log (“speech, word”) and daidalos (“skillful, ingeniously formed) Every society we’ve ever known has had poetry, and should the day come that poetry suddenly disappears in the morning, someone, somewhere, will reinvent it by evening. […]
...moreStarting Points
Following his essay, “The Art of Epigraph,” Jonathan Russell Clark turns to analyzing opening sentences at The Millions. He explores what makes contemporary and canonical first lines effective, and he contemplates, through several examples, whether or not there are identifiable patterns.
...moreIn Search of Lost Epigraphs
At The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark ruminates on the idea of the epigraph. Over the past decade, Clark has kept a Word document filled with quotes from literature, and the amassed 30,000 words, he admits, are less for insight and inspiration than a source of potential epigraphs for his own work. Clark analyzes several epigraphs […]
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