false 69926 0140174923 9780140174922 125 15 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170715150m/69926.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/69926.The_Art_of_Fiction_Illustrated_from_Classic_and_Modern_Texts 6570 David Lodge 3722 446 5 0 false Sun Aug 09 10:12:11 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 07:10:42 -0700 2009
What David Lodge has done is quite simple - he has chosen a variety of styles in fiction eg intrusive author, unreliable narrator, suspense, symbolism, magical realism, interior monologue etc and illustrated each of them with a passage taken from well known book with a succinct missive to go with them. The beauty of the book is in its discretion and economy making it easier to relate to a lay reader ( by which I mean a reader who had the fortune of escaping the painful literary expositions of neurotic university professors).

Consider these chapters - Interior Monologue, Stream of Consciousness, Symbolism - as I think of these techniques perhaps left to myself, I would choose Edouard Dujardin, James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald, but then I realise how wrong my choices could be, because these chaps almost master and monopolise the respective techniques, there by rendering themselves a poorer example for an average lay reader. Then as you read the simple missives, you see why David Lodge's choices are James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and DH Lawrence!

I gather these chapters appeared as weekly articles in the Independent in the 90s. I could easily picture myself religiously waiting for the articles every week, so that I could cut them off for my collection. Well, with the book, I guess that would have been unnecessary.]]>