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Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 · rating details · 503 ratings · 115 reviews

Over an extraordinary twenty-year career, Jane Smiley has written all kinds of novels: mystery, comedy, historical fiction, epic. “Is there anything Jane Smiley cannot do?” raves Time magazine. But in the wake of 9/11, Smiley faltered in her hitherto unflagging impulse to write and decided to approach novels from a different angle: she read one hundred of them, from classi...more Over an extraordinary twenty-year career, Jane Smiley has written all kinds of novels: mystery, comedy, historical fiction, epic. “Is there anything Jane Smiley cannot do?” raves Time magazine. But in the wake of 9/11, Smiley faltered in her hitherto unflagging impulse to write and decided to approach novels from a different angle: she read one hundred of them, from classics such as the thousand-year-old Tale of Genji to recent fiction by Zadie Smith, Nicholson Baker, and Alice Munro.

Smiley explores–as no novelist has before her–the unparalleled intimacy of reading, why a novel succeeds (or doesn’t), and how the novel has changed over time. She describes a novelist as “right on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing,” yet whose “job and ambition is to develop a theory of how it feels to be alive.”

In her inimitable style–exuberant, candid, opinionated–Smiley invites us behind the scenes of novel-writing, sharing her own habits and spilling the secrets of her craft. She walks us step-by-step through the publication of her most recent novel, Good Faith, and, in two vital chapters on how to write “a novel of your own,” offers priceless advice to aspiring authors.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel may amount to a peculiar form of autobiography. We see Smiley reading in bed with a chocolate bar; mulling over plot twists while cooking dinner for her family; even, at the age of twelve, devouring Sherlock Holmes mysteries, which she later realized were among her earliest literary models for plot and character.

And in an exhilarating conclusion, Smiley considers individually the one hundred books she read, from Don Quixote to Lolita to Atonement, presenting her own insights and often controversial opinions. In its scope and gleeful eclecticism, her reading list is one of the most compelling–and surprising–ever assembled.

Engaging, wise, sometimes irreverent, Thirteen Ways is essential reading for anyone who has ever escaped into the pages of a novel or, for that matter, wanted to write one. In Smiley’s own words, ones she found herself turning to over the course of her journey: “Read this. I bet you’ll like it.”(less)

Hardcover, 608 pages

Published September 13th 2005 by Knopf

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Jan 12, 2008 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-about-books

So many books .... so little time. Last year I read over a hundred books, yet I still feel I barely scratched the surface. There’s always the sense of falling further behind. One can certainly understand the appeal of Pierre Bayard’s “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read”, if only as an aid to help keep your head above water, to help navigate the tsunami of new material which bombards us monthly.

But that’s not what this review is about. Jane Smiley’s “Thirteen ways of Looking at the Novel” w...more So many books .... so little time. Last year I read over a hundred books, yet I still feel I barely scratched the surface. There’s always the sense of falling further behind. One can certainly understand the appeal of Pierre Bayard’s “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read”, if only as an aid to help keep your head above water, to help navigate the tsunami of new material which bombards us monthly.

But that’s not what this review is about. Jane Smiley’s “Thirteen ways of Looking at the Novel” won’t help you to deal with the problem of sheer volume of new books that are published nowadays. In fact, weighing in at close to 600 pages, it may actually slow progress towards whatever numerical goal you may have set for 2008. Nonetheless, I urge you, I implore you, to get this book and to take the time to read it. Why? Because if you do, you will never read a novel the same way again. I have read no other book that comes close to this one in terms of enriching my overall reading experience.

The structure of the book is straightforward. The first twelve chapters, spanning 270 pages, or just under half the book, have titles like The Origins of the Novel, The Psychology of the Novel, Morality and the Novel, The Art of the Novel, The Novel and History. Each reads like a terrific tutorial by the professor of literature you wish you had had in college. Though these chapters are never less than fascinating, for my money it’s the next four chapters which make this book so brilliant. They are titled The Circle of the Novel, A Novel of Your Own (I), A Novel of Your Own (II), ‘Good Faith: A Case History . Basically, Smiley uses the 100 pages or so spanned by these chapters to given an inspired tutorial, of unsurpassed brilliance, on how to write a novel. If I had my way, it would be required reading for all of the Rick Moodys, the Heidi Julavits, the Dave Eggers, the Deborah Eisenbergs, any of those too-smart-for-their-own good writers at work today who continue to foist off their whip-smart, empty-hearted, look-at-me-how-smart-am-I, metafictional experiments on the unsuspecting reader, passing it off as ‘literary fiction’.

In the last half of the book, Smiley analyzes 101 of her favorite novels, ranging from ‘The Tale of Genji’ and ‘The Decameron’ to ‘White Teeth’ and ‘Atonement’, bringing to bear the ideas laid out in the first half of the book. This is done with such wit, intelligence, and sympathy that the effect is to make you want to re-read those books you were already familiar with, and to rush out and get the books she discusses that you haven’t already read.

In short, this is one of those rare books that is genuinely uplifting, and will rekindle your enthusiasm for reading. I can give it no higher recommendation.
(less)

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Jun 09, 2011 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: litcrit

If Jane Smiley's brain was a car it wouldn't be a car it would be a chunky powerful red tractor forever heaving things out of deep ditches and making a hell of a loud noise whilst doing so. Every time I read some of this big book it's like she's four inches from my face yelling things. But quite a lot of what she's yelling is really good. Frinstance -

"unfortunately for the highly ideological novelist, ideas change - the first things to die in any novel are those precious social theories that the...more

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Jun 01, 2013 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: writing, non-fiction, books-about-books, female-author, literary, ebook

Books about books can be interesting or deadly dull, and books with one author's arbitrary list of "100 books I think you should read" can likewise be great when they convince you to add a few to your TBR shelf, or annoying when you find yourself saying "Come on — a list full of obscure 19th century novels most people have never heard of, but no love at all for genre fiction?" I found myself doing both while reading 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. Jane Smiley talks about novels with enthusiasm...more Books about books can be interesting or deadly dull, and books with one author's arbitrary list of "100 books I think you should read" can likewise be great when they convince you to add a few to your TBR shelf, or annoying when you find yourself saying "Come on — a list full of obscure 19th century novels most people have never heard of, but no love at all for genre fiction?" I found myself doing both while reading 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. Jane Smiley talks about novels with enthusiasm and wisdom and admirable depth, but she's not exactly exciting. She's a Pulitzer-prize winning literary author and she writes with a careful, analytical style that I found very informative and knowledgeable, but she did not exactly make me want to run out and read her novels. That said, I thought this was an excellent book and one that any serious reader should read.

Smiley started writing 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel while she was suffering writer's block post-9/11. She decided to "go back to her roots" by reading through a bunch of novels — 100 of them — and over the course of three years, besides writing lovely and incisive synopses and literary analyses of all of them, produced this book about what a novel is. She also talked about how novels form society and form the mind, not just the other way around.

When, during the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Al Gore was asked to name his favorite book, he named The Red and the Black. Part of the reason I put it on my list was his recommendation. After I read it, I couldn't really understand what he liked about it—Julien Sorel seemed quite unlike Mr. Gore would want to seem, a cold, ambitious opportunist who uses and betrays women, then gets into trouble with the law and is executed in the end. But at least Gore's choice was a long and serious novel. The man in charge of the Western world had chosen a children's book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. Let's not remark that this book is a tale of gluttony; let's just observe that it isn't a novel, that its choice as George W. Bush's favorite book perhaps reflects the fact that he doesn't read, or hasn't read, any serious novels. After a hundred and more novels of all kinds and degrees of seriousness, I was well aware that the habit of reading novels molds the mind in several significant ways, ways that other forms of literature do not. I wish that my president was reading Pride and Prejudice. Or As I Lay Dying. Or The Harafish. Or A Journal of the Plague Year.

So, Jane Smiley is what you might call one o' them elitist lib'rul intellectual types. More power to her — while her literary tastes aren't exactly the same as mine (there is a hint of snootiness in her studious avoidance of much of anything that smacks of pop fiction, though of course some of the books she mentions were bestsellers because they were great books), her point is well taken, and one I wish more people took seriously. Not that a Presidential candidate's choice in reading is necessarily a litmus test for fitness of office, but you do have to kind of wonder about someone who hasn't read an actual book since high school. (Which unfortunately describes most of American society.) The main reason I read is because I enjoy reading (duh), but I also read because I think it exercises the mind and it's good to have some intellectual pursuits, which is also why I've been reading more classics and "literary" books lately, even though I've always been more of a SF&F fan. 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel is great because Smiley articulates a lot of my thoughts about novels that I had no clue how to articulate before, points out a lot of things I always knew intuitively but couldn't describe intelligibly, and also taught me a lot of things I didn't know.

Besides tracing the history of Western literature (Smiley does mention a few non-European/American books, but mostly it's pretty Eurocentric), this book describes several different models for looking at novels — as a reader, as a critic, as a historian, as a writer. The first half of the book is all about novels as novels, and novelists. Aspects of the novel you've probably never consciously thought about before unless you're a literature major, like types of discourse and questions novels ask about society and what novels say about society as social documents and so on. If this sounds kind of dull, it's not, actually, if you are a true lover of literature. I'd call this book a "biography of the novel," if you consider the novel a historical character with a history going back (depending on how you reckon it) 400 years or a thousand.

In the second half of the book, Smiley summarizes and talks about the 100 novels she read to overcome her writer's block. It's not really fair for me to describe this as a recommendations list, because she doesn't actually claim they are the 100 best books ever, nor are they her 100 favorite books (in fact, several of them she says outright she didn't like). She chose each one because she thought it had an important place in the novelistic landscape, either because it was historically important, or because it was the greatest example of a certain type of novel, or because it was so influential on so many subsequent novelists, etc. If like me you read a lot but sometimes have trouble saying much more about a book than whether or not you liked it, you will envy Smiley's ability to tease apart every little detail about a novel's structure, pacing, prose, themes, characterization, and then to put it in a historical and literary context and talk a little bit about the author. These are some of the best 2-4 page book reviews I've ever read. Like I said, Smiley doesn't actually like all of them, and she dings a few classics that might cause some book fans to gasp in outrage. But she doesn't trash any of them either — she finds something valuable in every one, and every review is worth reading.

As mentioned above, Smiley doesn't seem to like genre fiction much. She lists a few classics that are precursors to modern genre fiction (T.H. White, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, etc.) but she certainly didn't find any non-literary novels written in the 20th century or later to be worth examining. It would have been nice if she'd at least mentioned them. But that aside, if you do want to be more well-read, you'd have a hard time being more well-read than Jane Smiley. This book is the next best thing to reading everything she's read. Highly recommended.(less)

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Feb 19, 2008 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: novel-readers; wannabe novel-writers

Recommended to Jessica by: david; ginnie

Shelves: wish-i-owned

I wish Jane Smiley were on Bookface so that she could be my Bookster. I guess that isn't really necessary, though, thanks to this!

I really, really enjoyed 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. I think it's great for someone who, like me, enjoys reading novels but doesn't think much about what they are or why she likes them, who'd appreciate some framework for thinking about them that isn't based at all in literary criticism or theory. Smiley isn't writing as an academic or a critic, but as a reader a...more I wish Jane Smiley were on Bookface so that she could be my Bookster. I guess that isn't really necessary, though, thanks to this!

I really, really enjoyed 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. I think it's great for someone who, like me, enjoys reading novels but doesn't think much about what they are or why she likes them, who'd appreciate some framework for thinking about them that isn't based at all in literary criticism or theory. Smiley isn't writing as an academic or a critic, but as a reader and novelist, and while her insights might not be striking for someone who's spent a lot of time contemplating the form, for me this book was full of revelations. I appreciated Smiley's thoughts on the political nature of the novel, on its intimate and social aspects, and about specific characteristics of novel-reading and writing. Although I didn't necessarily agree with everything she said, she did make some compelling points about the political implications of empathy, and of what it means for people in power to read, or not to read novels for this reason. She synthesizes her material -- the 100 novels on her "read" list, along with some simple, Wikipedia-level background about their authors -- in a casual, personal, organic way that really makes the book feel like a conversation with Smiley in her kitchen, or like communication over Bookster. I really do think Smiley'd be into this site.... she's already dumped several volumes on my already straining to-read pile.

This kind of made me feel like I should read A Thousand Acres, or maybe something else by her that wouldn't obligate me to bone up on the Shakespeare first.... I tried Horse Heaven a few years ago when it came out, but, not being a horsey type of girl, was bored as hell and eventually gave up. It was interesting finding out that Horse Sense is Smiley's own favorite of her novels, precisely because she is (in addition to being smiley) an extremely horsey type of girl herself.... which is just one more thing that highlights how subjective all this novel-reading type stuff is. There's something that's just such a huge relief about that, isn't there? I really think until I got addicted to Bookface that I'd forgotten that, that there is this one place that subjectivity still matters in such a simple, sweet, classic, un-pomoey way that is really just about taste and whatever people happen to like for whatever reason, and that is the basic point of it all. Smiley herself emphasizes this aspect of novels herself at the end of this book, in her review of Atonement. She writes that her perception of its failure as a work of art is part of what she likes about it: "McEwan is trying something out, taking a risk. I like the fact that it is a risk worth taking. When any reader, reading any hundred novels, loves some, likes some, doesn't care about a few, and hates one or two, she is asserting her freedom and casting her vote. I like that best of all" (p. 567).

Yeah! I might not agree with everything Smiley says in here about liberalism and the novel, but I really appreciated hearing it. I'd recommend this book to people like me, who're in the mood for a gentle, straightforward, enthusiastic, and somewhat old-fashioned approach to the novel. Good times!(less)

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Jan 05, 2009 Dusty Myers rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought this book would be light and breezy, probably because of ill-informed notions I had of Smiley as a writer (I guess I placed her near Anne Tyler in some kind of continuum), and because of the folksy title. The conceit behind the book is that shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Smiley found herself not just stuck/bored with the novel she'd been writing, but also unsure about the importance of The Novel in general. So she set the book aside and read 100 novels over the next three years. The not...more I thought this book would be light and breezy, probably because of ill-informed notions I had of Smiley as a writer (I guess I placed her near Anne Tyler in some kind of continuum), and because of the folksy title. The conceit behind the book is that shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Smiley found herself not just stuck/bored with the novel she'd been writing, but also unsure about the importance of The Novel in general. So she set the book aside and read 100 novels over the next three years. The notes she took on these novels (ranging from The Tale of Genji [1004] to Jennifer Egan's Look at Me [2001]) form the basis for her discovery on what the novel is and can do and should do.

Some of this stuff is arbitrary and valuable only in Smiley's need to construct some new apparatus to set her book aside from the dozens of others like it. For her it's the Circle of the Novel, which is a kind of clock face with some form of discourse at each of its numbers. Going around clockwise it's this:

1. Travel narrative
2. History
3. Biography
4. Tale
5. Joke
6. Gossip
7. Diary/Letter
8. Confession
9. Polemic
10. Essay
11. Epic
12. Romance

So you can put any novel ever written at the center of the clock and start drawing lines to the forms included therein. Smiley's able to show that novels we kind of communally agree to be "great" have lines going off in all directions. Like at least seven of them. But then again, such novels tend to be certain kinds of novels (i.e., 19th century ones; one of the smartest things Smiley says in this book is that Middlemarch isn't necessarily the best novel ever written, as many people like to contest, but that it's merely "the most novelish of novels" [182]). And to, like, plan a fresh, unwritten novel by trying to figure out the best 1-12 combination would be a bad enough idea that I don't think I have to talk about why, do I?

So, it's neat. Lots of the book is Aristotelianly neat in how much sorting and ordering into types gets done. Also, the whole second half contains extended summaries/analyses of the 100 novels she read, which is handy for any level of English student.(less)

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Nov 24, 2007 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2007, non-fiction, books-about-books

This is a long book and I'm not sure who it was written for. I thought it was going to be an examination, from a personal perspective, of novels that Smiley liked, admired, and/or thought were relevant in the history of the novel. It is that, in a way; it's also a how-to book for would-be novelists; something that completely confused and didn't add anything to the value of the book. Overall the book is confused. It does not have the rigor of a scholarly work and it doesn't have the charm of a me...more

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Feb 17, 2009 Heather rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, nonfiction

I originally picked this book up at the library because I had fallen in love with How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster; that book changed the way I read, and it made me want to read more on the artistry behind reading and writing. The text started off at a crawl, the reader has to want to read this and plug through the dense language to get at the important message and value of this book. This is not dissimiliar to Smiley's works of fiction, as they generally start off slo...more I originally picked this book up at the library because I had fallen in love with How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster; that book changed the way I read, and it made me want to read more on the artistry behind reading and writing. The text started off at a crawl, the reader has to want to read this and plug through the dense language to get at the important message and value of this book. This is not dissimiliar to Smiley's works of fiction, as they generally start off slow, use dense paragraphs, stretch the reader's vocabulary to its sheer limit, and end up a satisfying read once completed.

Smiley challenges the readers of this book, among whom she assumes are aspiring authors, to understand the novel as a piece of art, as a social document, and a work of fiction that should inspire, educate, and entertain readers. She details how the novel has evolved throughout history from its earliest beginnings as fables and story cycles to its current position as a (somewhat) esoteric element of the cultural elite. Smiley makes repeated references to the fact that true literary fiction (exluding all types of genre fiction in her analysis) is generally reserved for a small segment of society, the large majority of which are women; however, she doesn't find this to be a negative mark against our culture and doesn't urge authors to pander to the masses--there are plenty of authors already doing that with their series of light romances, mystery thrillers, and the other types of genre fiction.

As the book blurb from the jacket mentioned, Jane does do a wonderful job on sharing the secrets of her writing process--the process that has led her numerous times to best seller's lists and won her a Pulitzer Prize (A Thousand Acres). The best part about this is that Smiley provides these insights in the final chapters, before she begins her discussions of the 100+ books she read, after she has taken you on a journey to develop your love and admiration for the novel and the writing process. She inspires you to want to write and contribute to the greater body of literature, the "world's big library" as she calls it.

In regard to her review of the 100+ novels, therein lies the only mark against her which reduced her rating to an A, rather than an A+. Smiley read every book with a (seemingly) open mind, providing a summary of the plot, an analysis of the writing, and an assessment of the work's contribution to society (both the society contemporary to the author and our current culture). Her numerous glowing reviews open the reader to discover lots of literary gems they likely would have overlooked, and expands their "to be read" list exponentially. The draw back is that numerous times she references other books she reviewed in the list, and the reading got a bit tedious. It would have been preferable if she had (when finding works and/or authors that fit within a similar canon) to combine these entries and/or shortened her summary/analysis significantly. By around book review #76 the reading got repetitive and tedious, with many of the books running together in the reader's mind, and this could have been avoided if she had reduced or eliminated redundancies.

All in all, a good book--definitely should be read by anyone who loves reading, writing, or the idea of reading and writing.(less)

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Apr 21, 2013 Henry added it

Shelves: theory-criticism

Everyone acknowledges that true stories can never be fully known--too many details lack corroboration, too many witnesses disagree about what really happened. Every true story is unsatisfying insofar as it is required to be true. But since the novel is required to be complete (its ddispensation from truthfulness), its acknowledged untruthfulness removes it from the world of consequences. The raeder suspending disbelief expects a novel to take lace in a designated game area (inside a book) under...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Ann Spivack rated it 2 of 5 stars

Disappointing. I want to read other reviews and maybe approach this book with a different perspective but some of the writing here seems purposely off-putting. Here's an example: "Paradoxically, given that novels are always referred to as 'fiction,' the fictive nature of the novel is its most contingent quality."
This doesn't compel me to keep reading.
Smiley wrote this book after 9/11 and after the really horrible novel "Good Faith." I disliked "Good Faith" intensely -- almost as passionately a...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Melinda Belle Harrison rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: all writers and readers of novels

Recommended to Melinda Belle by: My sister

Shelves: art-and-creating, creative-writing, nonfiction-and-reference, reading-in-2012, reference, reading-and-writing-books

I've had some issue with my own writing lately and to work out some problems in my mind, I stopped and read this book, which has been so helpful to me. Jane Smiley is a genius! For one she wrote this book for herself when she got stuck in a writing project and she wanted to think about reading and writing novels.

She explains that there are many sorts of writing and how novels fall into certain categories, and that the more categories the better. I always felt certain that I was writing a history...more

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Jun 14, 2011 Jane Turner rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: awesome, how-to-write

The goal of a good novel is to understand a character more completely than the reader understands herself, according to Jane Smiley. To do so, abundance is the key, and in her book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, Smiley provides an abundance of ideas far beyond her numeric 13.

When writing your novel, Smiley insists your characters possess an abundance of talent, misfortune, and feral nature, and you must pepper everything with insight and paradoxes. A story about war is really about peace, and...more

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Oct 10, 2010 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This is a filet mignon of a book: meaty, delicious, and satisfying. I've enjoyed most of Smiley's fiction (except "Greenlanders" - WTF?), and this non-fiction work shows me exactly why that is. She discusses her own work, but also undertook to read 100 novels when she was having a bout of writer's block. That project resulted in this book. In the first half, she discusses various aspects of the novel, in general. She also gives a couple of chapters worth of writing tips. The last half of the boo...more

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Jan 12, 2010 Glen Engel-Cox rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the ways to consider this unusual book by Pulitzer-prize winning author Smiley is as an instruction book. I purchased this because it came up as a featured selection of the Writer's Digest Book Club, and its as good a book regarding the process of writing a novel as any I've read, and better than most. Smiley points out that, unlike many other artistic endeavors, the novel is one that doesn't require much equipment (paper and a pen/pencil). What it takes, more than anything is motivatioon...more One of the ways to consider this unusual book by Pulitzer-prize winning author Smiley is as an instruction book. I purchased this because it came up as a featured selection of the Writer's Digest Book Club, and its as good a book regarding the process of writing a novel as any I've read, and better than most. Smiley points out that, unlike many other artistic endeavors, the novel is one that doesn't require much equipment (paper and a pen/pencil). What it takes, more than anything is motivatioon and perseverance, as it is simply the accrual of words into sentences into paragraphs into pages. She underscores that getting your novel published is a different matter entirely, but if you want to write one, you likely have the ability.

The writing of this book itself was not necessarily as a textbook for writing programs, although Smiley has taught creative writing, but as therapy for Jane Smiley's own writing. From the text, it seems that Ms. Smiley was having problems with a recent novel of her own, and decided to undergo a course of reading (originally 275 novels, shortened to 101 after she began) that helped break the mental block she had about her novel and also gave insight into the "question of the novel" itself. To get there, though, Smiley covers a number of topics including a history of the novel as an art form: one of her thirteen ways of looking at the novel is through the lens of history, tracing the growth of the novel from Don Quixote. Another interesting portion covers the philosophy of novels, making the case that novel-reading is something of a subversive activity, as it incubates an ability to see multiple points of view (each novel, for example, requires that you try to understand at least one protagonist whose point of view is unique and unlike your own), thus leading to a more liberal view of the world (as opposed to a conservative, one-view-fits-all view of the world).

My favorite part of this book, and what likely will live on with me long after it has become just another book on my writing shelf, is how Smiley sees the novel as a game for both the reader and the writer. The reader expects the writer to follow the rules of the novel game: once a character and a setting are created, that the characters will proceed along the pages according to cause-and-effect relations (i.e., the plot) until a resolution is obtained. This is most apparent in the mystery genre, where the reader even tries to determine from clues presented by the author early on what the likely cause-and-effect resolution will be. But the game metaphor is even stronger for the writer, who gets to "roll the dice" for the characters and make those determinations of cause-and-effect according to what they think the most likely occurance would be. Some writers even complicate this by playing additional games as they write, trying to incorporate themes (in a novel about birth, the writer tries to make sure all the images reflect eggs, for example) or allusions to other works, places or events. As a game-player, I am surprised I had never thought of writing as just another game, but now that I've read Smiley on the matter, I feel like I'm never going to see it any other way, as it has changed my entire view of the process.

Half of the book is given over to a reading diary of those 101 novels that Smiley read on her way to creating the other half of the book. As someone who's been writing such immediate impressions on books as he's just read them, I admire her descriptions and commentary, even while feeling somewhat abashed at how few of these books I've read, although Smiley makes pains to state that her list is not a "Best Novels" list. If anything, it goes to show you that there is an incredible wealth of great literature to be had, and I've already marked a number of books from her list that I want to now read.

I'd highly recommend this book for both aspiring writers as well as anyone who likes to think about what they read.(less)

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Nov 23, 2009 Amy Wilder is currently reading it

This is a little daunting because I feel reading it like a stupid ninth grader who has never taken an English class not a graduate of a good college who took 400-level English courses. On the other hand I feel like when/if I finish it I will be able to TEACH a 400-level English class - or at least ninth grade English. I think that it's interesting that my teachers and professors never stopped to talk for long about what a novel is - I mean they went over the origins of the novel - damn, I think...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Caroline rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

For a book that is at times obsessed with classification, it does not easily fit into a single genre. It contains a hefty dose of literary criticism, although said criticism, in the first section of the book at least, is usually in the form of analysis of the novel form in general and not of any work of fiction in particular, and so at times the book is more like a textbook than anything else. 13 Ways is also heavily autobiographical--Smiley devotes the book's entire first chapter to an account...more For a book that is at times obsessed with classification, it does not easily fit into a single genre. It contains a hefty dose of literary criticism, although said criticism, in the first section of the book at least, is usually in the form of analysis of the novel form in general and not of any work of fiction in particular, and so at times the book is more like a textbook than anything else. 13 Ways is also heavily autobiographical--Smiley devotes the book's entire first chapter to an account of how her failure of inspiration while writing her novel Good Faith made her decide to spend time reading a hundred novels and gleaning inspiration from the example of all the novelists who had come before her.
The book's next eight chapters detail Smiley's personal theories of the novel, with titles such as "What Is a Novel?"; "Who Is a Novelist?"; "Morality and the Novel;" "The Novel and History," etc. These are followed by two chapters of advice on how to write a novel of your own, another autobiographical chapter about what happened with Good Faith, and Chapter 13, which takes up half of the book's 570 pages and details the hundred books Smiley read, with a plot synopsis and a review of each.
13 Ways is a very smart book--sometimes too much so. Much of the book is just a little too pedantic, and generally takes the not entirely likable tone of someone out to prove how intelligent she is. In trying to come up with new, witty ways of expressing that intelligence, she sometimes strays into incomprehensibility: "A novelist is someone right on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing"--huh? Smiley also strives to attain physicist-like levels of rigor about her theories in the inherently subjective field of literary criticism, and in doing so ironically sounds less convincing, such as when she argues that all novels are inherently political.
However, 13 Ways does have plenty of merit. The chapters on how to go about starting your own novel I found very helpful, especially the chapter on rough drafts, because they emphasized the "just get it down" nature of rough drafts--something important for those, like me, who are die-hard perfectionists about their writing. I also found Chapter 9, "The Circle of the Novel," to be especially enlightening. In this chapter, Smiley discusses how novels are an aggregation of several distinct literary styles, including epic, essay, polemic, history, biography, tale, and others.
I should probably mention that I really only read half the book thoroughly, which I normally don't do, but I had a good reason. The other half, the list of the hundred novels Smiley read and what she thought about them, seemed unnecessary to the understanding of Smiley's ideas about novels in general, and although I skimmed the list to see what she thought about certain books, Smiley herself mentions towards the end of the main body of the book that the list is not meant to be read straight through. She also gives mini-reviews of many of the books in the main body of 13 Ways, and repeats many of these reviews in the final chapter.
To conclude, you will probably like, or at least appreciate, 13 Ways of Looking At the Novel if you want to learn more about literature in a theoretical sense rather than an example-based one. A high tolerance for somewhat dry writing and a willingness to cut through the pedantry and self-aggrandizement will also be helpful. Still, if you can overlook these faults, 13 Ways is a quite rewarding read, especially if you are considering writing a novel of your own.(less)

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Critical opinion varies greatly on the discourse offered by this Pulitzer Prize winner on the biography and art of the novel. While some critics applaud her convictions on what makes a novel and a novelist, others feel she needs to exit the classroom and enter the minds of the mainstream reader. As the author of 11 novels who turned her attention to devouring books when she lost inspiration while writing Good Faith (**** July/Aug 2003) during 9/11, she has certainly done her homework. Perhaps th

...more

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Mar 21, 2008 Carrie rated it 3 of 5 stars

If I could, I'd give this book both a five and a one. Some of this book is gut-wrenching and life -affirming (if your life happens to revolve, in any way, around novels. Mine does.) She has a whole section about how reading novels teaches empathy, and I love that. But her summaries of the 100 novels she read, well, they kind of piss me off sometimes. Lolita is mediocre? I dunno, Jane.

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Jan 14, 2013 Maurice Carlos Ruffin rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've never come across a book quite like Smiley's. To call it a "how-to" novel sells it way short. Really it reads like the world's most comprehensive literary survey course taught by your super smart, super kind aunt, who happened to win a Pulitzer prize for her adaptation of King Lear.

The book is divided into two sections. In the first section, she covers the "13 ways," which includes a thorough recitation of the modes of the novel. She covers the history and innovations of the form, the aesth...more

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Mar 23, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

If only I could put together something this bright, insightful, and inspiring when I have writer's block! Published in 2005, this book was borne from dual frustrations - Smiley's inability to finish her new novel and the then recent attacks on the World Trade Center. As an antidote, she decides to read 100 novels from The Tale of Genji to Atonement (though, she notes, not read chronologically) and remind herself what the novel is capable of. This book is the fruit of those labors.

The first twel...more If only I could put together something this bright, insightful, and inspiring when I have writer's block! Published in 2005, this book was borne from dual frustrations - Smiley's inability to finish her new novel and the then recent attacks on the World Trade Center. As an antidote, she decides to read 100 novels from The Tale of Genji to Atonement (though, she notes, not read chronologically) and remind herself what the novel is capable of. This book is the fruit of those labors.

The first twelve sections of the book revolve around the history of the novel, its parts, and what it can do when it's put all together. These chapters are fluid, informative, and, I found, immensely helpful to someone about to dive into their second draft. I was underlining and page-bending like crazy. But there is plenty to interest readers who are simply interested in the critical perspective too, in what great novels have done and what they can teach us. Her insistence that great works of fiction impart empathy is perhaps not new but it is nice to be reminded of in a time when people seem to be growing both more apathetic about the world's problems and more antagonistic with one another.

The majority of the book, though, is made up of short reactions and thoughts to the 100 books she read. Smiley encourages not to read all of these through like you would a novel but to cherry pick those that seem interesting to you, which is what I did, though I probably ended up reading around 70 or so. She brings unique and surprising insights to all but it's inevitable that such an exercise will reveal the proclivities of the reader. Smiley doesn't read much genre fiction or delve into po-mo aside from Ulysses. She also tends to read almost everything with a gendered perspective. Almost all great novels, certainly those in the European tradition, seem to revolve around the question of "what's to be done with the women?" This is intriguing but not always the best way to interpret certain texts. And I must say I chuckled when one of Smiley's complaints about Atonement was that "there was almost no repartee!" as though a requirement of any book about the upper crust is that they be sufficiently witty. Still, she is an agreeable companion and I look forward to revisiting this book's lessons throughout my (hopeful) writing career.(less)

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Nov 19, 2008 Nick marked it as never-finished · review of another edition

Smiley's prose is well-crafted but dull and meandering. There are neither bold claims nor humor. She has some good insights, but they seem to lie at the bottom of a sty: they might well be worth reading but do you really want to dig through the mud and dung to get there? The best part of the book is her analysis of the 100 novels--there she is pithy and her choice of novels is quite fascinating.

I thought it funny that she didn't admire "The Unberable Lightness of Being." Perhaps she is right th...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Wm rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: aesthetics-writing-linguistics, essay-creative-nonfiction

I enjoyed this book but wonder about who would be interested in reading it. It's not scholarly enough for critics but too methodical and slow for readers. Which leaves writers. But because Smiley's tastes and theories are peculiar to her, I don't know how interesting it will be to aspiring or professional novelists. I liked it because I didn't mind some of the sloggy parts and I have a general interest in how fiction writers conceive/position themselves and the field. That being said, the major...more

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Feb 15, 2009 Mindy rated it 3 of 5 stars

The second half of this large book consists of short essays on the one hundred books that Smiley read as a self-assigned project. To be honest, I only glanced at those essays. The first half of the book, on the other hand, is at times captivating, at times dull. She has much wisdom to dispense to both novel readers and writers, and she is an insightful and interesting critic, but I was lost and disinterested when she discussed books I hadn't read. (Which she occasionally does. At length.) I thin...more

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May 16, 2009 Sheila rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: all who are interested in the novel as an art form

This book is pretty much my bible of good fiction writing. It looks at the history and development of the novel, and has two excellent chapters of advice for fiction writers. Smiley lists 100 significant and influential novels that she read as she set about formalizing her understanding of the form. I have really enjoyed using this as a checklist, noting the books I had already read at the time I first read "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel," and since then referring to it for ideas of what to re...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Wendy Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, writing-craft

It's hard to know who this book was meant for. It's part memoir, how-to for writers, discussion of the history and cultural relevance of the novel, and lit crit.

This is a heavy read, and it felt a little more like I was reading a textbook than I would have liked. The writing is beautiful, but at times, I think the same points and feeling could have been conveyed in half the word count. Parts of it were immensely enjoyable and insightful while other parts dragged a bit.

This one had me a little...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Monster rated it 3 of 5 stars

Smiley writes some pertinent reflections on literature and literary critique, but I found this work to be overwhelming lofty, self-indulgent and rhetorical. She is apparently misinformed about the state of academia and the study of art (ie. interdisciplinary), and a great deal of her ranting more closely resembles stoner diatribe. I appreciate her writing, passions and many of her conclusions; The route to those conclusions seemed disappointingly fraught with her masturbation of misapplied theor...more

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Oct 10, 2007 Alden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-authors-i-have-interviewed

http://www.bookpage.com/0509bp/jane_s...

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Sep 04, 2011 John rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebooks, library_books

Really two books in one - several ways of analyzing what makes a book a "novel", and a second section containing chronological analyses of the 101 novels read by the author to use as discussion material. Smiley does a good job of keeping things approachable for a casual reader (yours truly, for example), though the going got a bit rough with not-so-current references (The Decameron, etc.). I've thus rated it as three stars, but those with a stronger background in literature (and lit crit) would...more

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Apr 27, 2010 Ashlie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading this book was like taking an English/writing class, except without the papers, the class fees, and the droning professor. (As an aside I loved all of my English professors, writing or otherwise!) I've never read anything by Jane Smiley but it was interesting how she dealt with an episode of writer's block by deconstructing the origins of the novel. I found the chapters dealing specifically with the writing of a novel very captivating, since all my writing classes focused on short story w...more

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May 20, 2013 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-about-books

How funny, I haven't added this book. I've been reading it for like three years now. It's terrific. Smiley's take on the 100 novels she reads don't always agree with mine, but they often do - and they're always clear-eyed, unsentimental and very smart. It's pretty fun to finish a classic, think "Man, I kinda didn't like that," flip to this thing and find Smiley just savaging it.

She calls To Kill a Mockingbird "The Uncle Tom's Cabin of the 20th century." Lol.

There's no reason for you not to have...more

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Dec 13, 2011 Larry Bassett rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

I was not optimistic about Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel after I got it on GR Bookswap. The second half is about 100 books that the author thinks will “illuminate the whole concept of the novel.” I have read one of them (To Kill a Mockingbird) and heard of only about one-third more. Probably more than George W. Bush but still embarrassing for a college english major. Smiley takes Bush (who said his favorite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar) to task in the chapter on history. She got p...more

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About Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar...more

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