The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts

From Jane Austen to Paul Auster, irony to magical realism, the novelist's art is revealed in an entertaining and enlightening book for readers and writers--from the author of Nice Work. Here are 50 of David Lodge's articles from the acclaimed series that engaged and delighted readers of The Washington Post and the London Independent.

Unfortunately, I was never able to take very many literature classes in university,

and as a result, I have always felt that Literature was my Achilles Heel. Well, recently I have began writing some fiction of my own and I was looking for a concise, read-able pocket guide to literary concepts. This book definitely delivers all that.

Written originally as series of articles for The Independent, Lodge begins each chapter with an excerpt from a novel to illustrate a concept, which he then discusses for a few pages. For example: in Chapter 10, the topic is "Interior Monologue", for which he uses Joyce's "Ulysses". His analysis is never too dry or academic, yet it is very erudite.

David Lodge is already a very engaging writer of fiction and this guide is no different.

This book is a collection of texts on literary criticisms which the author had published in the form of a weekly column on a newspaper. The first chapter is entitled "The beginning", and the last chapter is entitled "The end". There are 50 chapters in total, and they all deal with different aspects of the art of fiction: suspense, surprise, introduction of characters, time, repetitions, intertextuality, unreliable narrator, stream of consciousness, metafiction, etc. etc., giving examples from classic and modern literature. It is intended for anyone interested in literature from the position of either readers, and/or writers, and/or literary critics.

The book is a great learning tour, giving sort of an insider's view on what authors had in mind, what their intentions might have been when writing certain things a certain way, how they exercised certain styles, how they were influenced by other authors, and how literary critics approach and analyze literary works.

A lot of literary criticism related vocabulary is introduced, and some of it is not really common, maybe not even for crosswords. A neat glossary of those terms put all together would have been great, but there is no such glossary. And if you want to quickly find where a specific literary term is used, or where a book is mentioned, then you are in bad luck, at least in the Spanish edition I read. There is only an "Index of Names" at the end, which includes just the names of writers. This is the only major flaw I find in this book: it lacks a comprehensive alphabetical index.

Out of the 50, there were only three chapters that I really did not like: #32 (Epyphany), #39 (Irony), and #48 (Narrative Structures). The author went either vague or cryptic on those chapters, as if he wasn't in the proper teaching mood, not being clear enough about the topic at hand, almost leaving the title of the chapter cold (at least for me, but I'm no literary critic after all.)

This is a book to re-read and keep learning from. The chapter/topic organization certainly makes it particularly suitable for it. Highly recommended.

"The Art of Fiction", not surprisingly, is a popular title. In addition to this entry by David Lodge, identically entitled works (albeit with different sub-titles after the seemingly ubiquitous colon) are available from John Gardner and Ayn Rand (in her case, one more example I suppose that "art" is in the eye of the beholder). I gather that the Gardner and Rand volumes are along the lines of "how-to" manuals for aspiring writers. Lodge's book, however, is written not for writers but rather for readers, especially intelligent devotees of the novel who are not steeped in academic literary theory.

THE ART OF FICTION is a collection of newspaper columns (revised for this publication) that Lodge originally wrote around 1991 for "The Independent on Sunday" on fifty different literary devices or principles. Each is illustrated with one or more excerpts from classical or modern texts. For example: "Point of View" is illustrated by means of an excerpt from "What Maisie Knew" by Henry James; "Stream of Consciousness" -- "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf; "Introducing a Character" -- "Goodbye to Berlin" by Christopher Isherwood; "Allegory" -- "Erewhon" by Samuel Butler; and "Metafiction" -- "Lost in the Funhouse" by John Barth. The pieces average four-and-a-half pages, so they are easily digested in five to ten minutes.

Lodge's discussion of his various literary topics is well-informed, intelligent, clear and concise. Blessedly, he avoids pedantry. In passing, he offers many brief opinions on matters literary (for example, Henry James is "the first truly modern novelist in the English language," and "the first great surrealist novel in the English language was arguably Alice in Wonderland"). For those who hold college degrees in some field of literature the book probably is overly general and simplistic. However, for many like me, who never took a course on literary theory or involving the nuts and bolts of writing, there is a fair amount about fiction to be absorbed, relatively enjoyably and without feeling like you have returned to school. And a bonus for me: I added a few more novels to my list of "books to read."

I purchased "The Art of Fiction" as a companion to other reading materials required for a class on Modern American Fiction. This is, as others have described, fairly lightweight in its language and/or depth of treatment. However, this is the book I use most often as a guide when writing short papers & essays. David Lodge is a master at clear and concise commentary. His purpose in this collection is to convey specific literary principles in a precise format (many appeared as newspaper columns). The preface states that this book is for people who like literary criticism in "small doses," and this is meant to be "a book to browse in, and dip into." The format is very convenient, as you can read an entire piece on-the-go, during lunch or in a waiting room. (Some examples of "chapters" are The Unreliable Narrator, The Non-Fiction Novel, Time-Shift, Magic Realism, and Metafiction.) I recommend this book for anyone who loves literature and wants to add more depth to their reading experience.

David Lodge states in his introduction, "This is a book for people who prefer to take their Lit. Crit. in small doses," and this, indeed, is an accurate categorization for Lodge's, The Art of Fiction. This is a collection of articles on various topics of writing that he wrote during a stint with the Washington Post. While more experienced writers may find his fifty topics of writing, ranging from quite literally "Beginning[s]" to "Ending[s]" and some "Metafiction" or "Sense of Place" in between, somewhat elementary in their discussion, a beginning writer may find his book more useful.

Lodge is a fan of the classics. This is apparent in his choice to begin each chapter with an excerpt from authors such as Henry James, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, though more contemporary authors like Martin Amis and Anthony Burgess are slipped in every so often. And arguably, it was a wise choice of Lodge's to use classics as his examples if the beginning writer is his target audience so as to transmit a sense of what is conventional before launching off into magic realism. But be forewarned-Lodge terms his topics "doses" in the introduction as though implying his discussion will provide some sort of cure to the ailing writer-when, in fact, we all know the writing process does not have solutions or cures that suddenly make it easy to sit down and type away for two hours. Roughly three to four pages are devoted to each topic which give the book, as a whole, the feel of "Learning to Write in Twenty-Four Hours." In Lodge's defense, however, he does provide a quick, concise discussion that will serve as both a quick introduction to the beginner and a quick refresher to the more advanced writer.

"Skaz is a rather appealing Russian word used to designate a type of first person narration that has the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word. In this kind of novel or story, the narrator is a character who refers to himself (or herself) as "I," and addresses the reader as "you." This is the first paragraph after an excerpt from J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and quintessential of Lodge's process throughout the book. He defines the topic to his reader straight and immediately which gives the collection its quick feel. As long as the reader keeps in mind that his definitions are not the be all and end all of the writing topic at hand, this collection of definitions (with a human voice infiltrating the definition) can be useful.