The Story behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and how They Work

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Overview

This big, beautiful anthology of short fiction is for readers, writers, and anyone curious about the mysterious processes of literary minds. All contributors have been recent faculty members of the prestigious Warren Wilson Low Residency Program, including such literary favorites as Margot Livesey, Charles Baxter, Robert Boswell, Jim Shepard, Antonya Nelson, David Shields, and the editors themselves.

Each writer was asked to submit an original story, accompanied by an essay describing the challenges of the story and how they were met. Since writers resist herding, the editors were happily surprised by the wide range of essays—"fiction writers, when given the space, think about their work very differently." We learn about the genesis of a story, how story evolves, what was eventually relinquished and why, and how a story—surprisingly—might "insist" on changing.

Arranged alphabetically by author, and beginning with Richard Russo's cogent introduction, this volume is a treasure throughout.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Though students of literature or writing are often told to stick to the text-to avoid guessing at authorial intention and process-the dictum doesn't squelch their curiosity. Fledgling writers, especially, wonder how the pros get the job done, where they find their inspiration and how they can tap into those creative wells. This rich anthology, which offers shrewd insight into writers' approaches-thereby sating our desires for their secrets while validating our own eccentric quirks-reassures all lovers of good writing that there is no one correct way to craft a good tale. The contributors, all recent faculty members at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in Swannanoa, N.C., offer model short stories followed by informal mini-essays on how they came to fruition. Antonya Nelson credits the seedling of "Strike Anywhere" to a student; Jim Shepard owes much of the title story from his new collection, Love and Hydrogen, to a flurry of research; while Tracey Daugherty cagily tips his hat to both imagination and autobiography, admitting only of his story, "City Codes," "it's all true except for the parts I made up." Writers' experiences couldn't be more different, with Robert Cohen "cackling" his way through the feverish high-speed ride of composing "The Varieties of Romantic Experience," while Ehud Havazelet took years to pen "Pillar of Fire." By sharing their stories as well as their struggles, their risk-taking and rule-breaking (Charles Baxter claims to have "violated most of the narrative norms" he tries to instill in his own students), these authors remind us that writing is a messy, fascinating and highly individualized process. This collection is a treasure trove of literary encouragement and wisdom. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393325324
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 12/19/2003
Pages: 512
Sales rank: 531,136
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.20 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Andrea Barrett

Andrea Barrett has received a National Book Award and a MacArthur grant and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in North Adams, Massachusetts, and teaches at Williams College.

Peter Turchi, director of the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program, lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Biography

Andrea Barrett combines, as the critic Michiko Kakutani put it, "a naturalist's eye with a novelist's imagination." For the award-winning novelist and short-story writer, natural science, particularly nineteenth-century natural history, is a central preoccupation, and scientists and naturalists such as Linnaeus, Darwin, and Mendel frequently figure in her work. Barrett herself, however, gave up the study of science shortly after completing an undergraduate degree in biology. She entered a Ph.D. program in zoology but dropped out during the first semester.

Yet the way Barrett writes is, perhaps, her own brand of science; it involves long hours of research and the painstaking distillation of historical fact into historically accurate fiction. By her own admission, Barrett is an obsessive researcher: "Often for a story, I will do enough research to write a couple of novels, and for a novel I'll do enough research to have written an encyclopedia," she said in an interview in The Atlantic. But in the end, she adds, "fiction is about the characters, the image, the language, the poetry, the sound; it isn't about information. The information has to be distilled down to let us focus on what's really going on with the people."

Barrett didn't start writing fiction in earnest until her thirties, and she labored in comparative obscurity until 1996. Then, with four novels already behind her, she won the National Book Award for her first collection of short stories, Ship Fever. The collection explores the romantic and intellectual passions of a variety of historical and fictional characters, from an aging Linnaeus to a pair of contemporary marine biologists. In it, "science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange and thrilling fictional material," said the Boston Globe.

The book's success launched Barrett into the literary limelight, where her reputation continued to grow. Her next book, The Voyage of the Narwhal, tells the story of a doomed scientific voyage to the Arctic in 1855. The writer Thomas Mallon called it "a brilliant reversal of Heart of Darkness: the danger is not that the characters will 'go native,' but that a lust for scientific knowledge and intellectual distinction will drive them to cruelties they would have been incapable of before."

Recently, Barrett's work has begun to feature recurring characters, some of them related to one another. In another collection of stories, Servants of the Map, several characters from Ship Fever reappear, as does the ship cook from The Voyage of the Narwhal. As Barrett follows the trajectory of their lives and relationships, it is increasingly apparent how attuned she is to the emotional lives, as well as the intellectual lives, of her characters. As Barry Unsworth wrote in The New York Times Book Review, Barrett captures "that blend of precision and appropriateness that has always characterized the best prose, an attentiveness to the truth of human feeling that is in itself a supremely civilized value."

Good To Know

When she isn't writing, Barrett plays African percussion with a group of musicians in Rochester, N.Y. The group includes her husband, the biologist Barry Goldstein.

1. Hometown:
  
  Cape Cod, Massachusetts
1. Date of Birth:
  
  November 16, 1954
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Cape Cod, Massachusetts
1. Education:
  
  B.A., Union College
2. Website:
  
  http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall01/004348.htm

	Introduction	9
	Strike Anywhere	19
	The Flowers of the Forest	34
	A Brief Survey of Ideal Desire	53
	The Old Fascist in Retirement	63
	The Varieties of Romantic Experience	83
	City Codes	100
	Sacha's Dog	125
	Ice-T	137
	My Shape	146
	I'm Not Through	166
	Mrs. Dimbleby	181
	Pillar of Fire	197
	Part of the Story	225
	Morton and Lilly, Dredge and Fill	249
	That's Right, You're Not From Texas	265
	Out Here	280
	Mortality	301
	Night Train	308
	Stranger	324
	The People Who Own Pianos	345
	Maria Elena	353
	The Annunciation	367
	The Moon Over Wapakoneta	396
	Love and Hydrogen	407
	Night, Truck, Two Lights Burning	427
	A Walk in Winter	442
	Contributors' Biographies	471
	Permissions	477

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The Story behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and how They Work

Overview

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Related Subjects

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Product Details

Meet the Author

Andrea Barrett

Biography

Good To Know

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

Rating Distribution

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4 Star

3 Star

2 Star

1 Star

Your Rating:

Your Recommendations:

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

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