Kevin's Watch

What are the most difficult, challenging or valuable books on writing, literature or rhetoric that you can think of? I'm running out of books that teach me anything new. I'll take doctoral dissertations or essays too. Something with insight and complexity. Especially a discussion of the fine subtleties of literature. I find my writing is too blunt sometimes. What books have helped you the most? Thanks.

Read Foucault. Brilliant man, brilliant philosophy, but hard to read.

Khaliban wrote:I'm running out of books that teach me anything new.

Try ... your own. Experiment. Practice. See for yourself what works when you use it. You're way beyond needing more abstract theory.

(Couldn't find an emoticon for taking a "cannonball" into a swimming pool.)

I know this is an old possibly defunct thread but I'm replying anyways.

The Art of Fiction John Gardner
Wizardry & Wild Romance Michael Moorcock (with an excellent intro by China Mieville)
The Six-Gun Mystique John Cawelti
Adventure, Mystery, and Romance also by John Cawelti
Morphology of the Folktale Vladimir Propp
The Fantastic in Literature Eric Rabin
Anatomy of Criticism Northrop Frye
and
Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell

and that's just the boys.

I also find pretty much anything these women have to say about writing valuable,
Ursula K LeGuin (I highly recommend Dancing at the Edge of the World, a book of talks, essays, and reviews by her)
Adrienne Rich (particularly an essay by her called When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision, which you can find online)

also i think one can learn alot just *reading* these womens' works, I certainly have;

Maxine Hong Kingston
Gertrude Stein
Willa Cather
Joan Didion
Zora Neale Hurston
Dorothy Parker
Anne Sexton
Shirley Jackson
Harper Lee
Eudora Welty
Flannery O'Conner....

well i could go on and on. heh.

Vraith wrote:Heh...why do you have such a lot of background in that Lu?
[[I'm sure there's a reason around here...I just haven't seen or don't recall it...OR maybe it's just an aggregation things I do know, and I just haven't strung them together]]

Anyway---very good calls, for the most part, I think. [[though a number I either know their writing, or their writing ON writing, but not both]]
I suspect for most who have some beginning on this, the women are the more useful/valuable.

Onwards: for a very large number of reasons I'd recommend [but also, for a small number of lesser reasons NOT]
Chinese Theories of Fiction. Ming Dong Gu.
At least one other book same author I'll definitely be reading.

because I am a writer? lol. college?
both.
so a couple of the above listed dudes I acquired in my classes at City College of San Francisco in the courses with my teacher and mentor, John Batty-Sylvan.
the Cawelti books he turned me on to. bizarrely, Cawelti was teaching at the time I was at University of Ky when I was there in the early to mid 80s but I was unaware and, at that time was a Theater major and not writing nor had any aspirations to write. I wanted to be a director. heh. it wasn't until 15+ years later that I enrolled at CCSF and met John and took every class he taught (all 3 academic writing classes, plus Myth in Literature, and 2 courses of Detective Fiction) that I became aware of Cawelti. John also used the Rabin book, the Propp book, and Northrop Frye in those courses and I found them ALL to be useful in the extreme. the Moorcock, the Gardner, and the Campbell books I found on my own.

I do have to say that all of these books are on my shelf, along with many other books on or about writing, Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, Stephen King's On Writing, another Gardner book On Becoming a Novelist, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, The Blues Detective, A Study of African American Detective Fiction by Stephen Soitos, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott...

yeah...not trying to present myself as any kind of "expert" on the subject but only to say that i have a great interest and have studied *some*.
that being said, i have no degree. while at CCSF i also took several film classes, documentary, Hitchcock, etc.
also i have read a great deal throughout my life. you could say i've pretty much made a life long study of crime and detective fiction and speculative fiction.

i have not, however, come across Chinese Theories of Fiction so i will have to look that one up!! thanks for that!


also...NONE of the above mentioned texts have helped me finish the story I've been working on for the past 10 years!!! hahaha (yes Syl, i'm still working on the Purgatory story! hahahaha!!) that's why I write pomes, cause I can FINISH them. and speaking of Syl, he would probably be a good one to tap for books and info. he's more studied than I am for SURE.

lucimay wrote:[
because


NONE of the above mentioned texts have helped me finish the story

On the first [and what followed]
It's strange how much of that for you, plus others roughly parallels my exposure. [[though I do have degrees, they came about through large spatial and temporal and relational dislocations.]]
[[[one of those was Theater...I have massive theater in my background...funnily, most of it was BEFORE I actually got the degree...that's another story.
I never considered writing as a real thing [except mediocre poetry to make myself feel better or spew things through, and lyrics for songs] till very late, mid/late-ish 30's.
It's still not a thing...still just long becomings towards maybe-things...
And I was aware of your crime-detective [also Sexton/poetry]...just not the EXTENT of it...


on the second: the book I recommended, and related/connected material---I've really been INTENTIONALLY not using what I think the "good stuff" in it on anything I've tried to write so far...cuz I just don't think I have the grasp on it yet to make it work right, build the idea with the meaning/purpose effectively/valuably.
but it's swarming in the sub-brain. Everything I try, I have side-notes of different ways to do it in that kind of ground...

Also...there's a thing... a long paper that I THINK is no longer behind a journal paywall that I found cuz of Octavia Butler...a deep and long dive into a couple African storytelling shapes/structures, how they fitted and didn't with Western [especially Fem. part] telling/theory. I THINK I still have all that stuff I found in school SOMEWHERE.

On the third: yea, there is no third...something that I wanted to ask, but I think it's Sky, not you?? or not??or maybe Ali??? just info, not on this topic...FB. Mess. time.

so...regarding your above statement about intentionally not using things you learned in the book...

I don't intentionally or unintentionally do *anything* when i'm writing.
I learned that in theater.
do the research, memorize the lines, then go do it.
i sort of figure the same thing applies to writing stories and pomes.
i've read a ridiculously inordinate amount of fiction.
i've read a goodly amount of non fiction in the areas i'm interested in.
i figure i'll just leave it to osmosis from there. heh.

you know....some things stick in your head and some things don't, right?
like...i'd give a hundred bucks to the person who could quote passages of dry-ass, academic Northrop Frye to my face!! hahahaha! that would be quite a feat. nobody learns that stuff in that way. you read it, you absorb what you can. maybe you go back again and absorb some more. or maybe you just put it on your shelf and when you need it, you open it up. thats why all those books are on my shelf.

tho i know the form of the villanelle (do not go gentle into that good night...)
try as i might, i can't write one. just never works out for me.

so yeah...keep them books close where you can put your hands on em when ya need em. heh. some stuff gets absorbed and comes out in your writing, some doesnt and you have to keep reminding yourself.

I couldn't find anything, so I read 100 books of literature instead. That helped a lot.

lucimay wrote:tho i know the form of the villanelle (do not go gentle into that good night...)
try as i might, i can't write one. just never works out for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMSUc2YjZ0k

omg Cag and Wayfriend!! love you guys!!!!

lucimay wrote:omg Cag and Wayfriend!! love you guys!!!!

Absolutely agree. WF only gets an A, Cag gets an A+ and extra cred.
Creative writing class, had to write one of those [and about 30 others---2 different forms a week, plus one of whatever/however we wanted.
My villanelle was bloody freakin awful.

That's what I love about them They Might Be Giants dudes: they is smart. And whenever I get a new album from them, I almost always say, "nobody writes lyrics like They Might Be Giants." It's why they are still one of my favorite bands. Even though their sound doesn't divert TOO far from their norm, they are still experimenting, particularly lyric-wise.

Vraith wrote:Absolutely agree. WF only gets an A, Cag gets an A+ and extra cred.

Now I regret not watching that video before I wasted twelve minutes of my life. Face, meet egg.

But it was awesome.

Kevin's Watch is truly like a box of chocolates...

An unhealthy obsession filled with nuts?

That sounds about right
"Never know what you will get"
Diverse perspectives

Still, the discipline
That poetic forms demand
Adds extra beauty

Awesome sauce all

Brilliant. WF .. brilliant Dred Poet Jethro