Janelle Bailey's review of On Teaching and Writing Fiction (original) (raw)

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Janelle Bailey's Reviews > On Teaching and Writing Fiction

On Teaching and Writing Fiction by Wallace Stegner

On Teaching and Writing Fiction
by

17951290

17: On Teaching and Writing Fiction by Wallace Stegner.

This one jumped out at me from the table at Faulkner House Books in New Orleans; this is a cozy and charming bookstore opened in the late 1980s in a residence in Pirate Alley where William Faulkner had taken a room with artist William Spratling in 1924, after wearing out his welcome with Sherwood Anderson and while writing his first book.

I visited that bookstore this past Sunday, and I wanted to purchase there something that would leave a lasting impression and allow me to remember, for a long time, where, exactly, I had purchased it. Admiring Stegner as I do--for his many novels that I've enjoyed reading, for his connections to Wisconsin, for his Stanford writing program having "produced" the likes of Wendell Berry and others I admire--this seemed like the very best thing to do, then, for a number of reasons.

On Teaching and Writing Fiction is a tremendous collection of Stegner's dense writing advice and direction, truly lectures he could have given and letters he wrote...all addressing the reader as writer or, perhaps even myself as wannabe writer. He shares his thoughts on other writing schools, including his own background in learning and practicing as well as collecting and sifting his assessments of the writing of a number of other great writers and sharing aspects of their processes and/or ideas about their own writing that they had previously shared. I marked up this book like crazy for all of its contained wisdom shared. I really felt, while reading this, that Stegner was talking directly to me and telling me that I could do it--whether that "it" is to become a better teacher of writing or a writer for real.

He shares much in ideas about that originally came from Joseph Conrad and Robert Frost, Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway and Henry James. He made sense of their writing, which I have read, in brand new ways. And it was so compelling to hear his assessments of what they had done, see how completely that matched my recollection of their works, but to here have the writing of them shared in such clear and definitive ways that I had never previously considered. It was an expansive and affirming experience.

And given that he praises writers for first being good readers, I felt even more satisfied.

Any writer or teacher of writing or reader-dreaming-of-writing will feel like they got to spend a few hours with a true master and a willing sharer of all he knows. It was like having a great guest lecturer on craft. If I had a classroom, I'd be immediately infusing some of these new ideas.

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Reading Progress

March 9, 2020 –Finished Reading

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