Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

Header

Liquid Story Binder XE by Black Obelisk Software

Disable Copy Paste

Amazon Quick Linker

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (Novel)


 In Search of Lost Time 
by Marcel Proust


In Search of Lost Time, first translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past, and sometimes referred to in French as La Recherche, is a novel in seven volumes by French author Marcel Proust. This early 20th-century work is his most prominent, known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory. Wikipedia

 In Search of Lost Time follows the narrator's recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century high-society France, while reflecting on the loss of time and lack of meaning in the world. The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished, he continued to add new material and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages, as they existed only in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.

The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927. Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs and scenes were anticipated in Proust's unfinished novel Jean Santeuil (1896–1899), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09).

The novel had great influence on twentieth-century literature; some writers have sought to emulate it, others to parody it. For the centenary of the French publication of the novel's first volume, American author Edmund White pronounced In Search of Lost Time "the most respected novel of the twentieth century." Wikipedia

Originally published: 1913
Pages:
4,215
Translators:
C. K. Scott Moncrieff; Stephen Hudson; Terence Kilmartin; Lydia Davis; James Grieve
Genre:
Modernist
Characters:
Charles Swann, Oriane de Guermantes, Prince de Guermantes, Basin, More

 Marcel Proust Books at Amazon

The PDF might take a minute to load. Or, click to download PDF.

If your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file.

 

About the Author 

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (/pruːst/; French: [maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu; with the previous English title translation of Remembrance of Things Past), originally published in French in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Wikipedia
 

Born: July 10, 1871, Neuilly-Auteuil-Passy, France
Died: November 18, 1922, Paris, France
Parents: Jeanne Weill Proust and Achille Adrien Proust
Siblings: Robert Proust

Marcel Proust Books at Amazon

No comments: