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Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature
Searching and erudite new essays on writing from the author of Burning Down the House.
Charles Baxter’s new collection of essays, Wonderlands , joins his other works of nonfiction, Burning Down the House and The Art of Subtext . In the mold of those books, Baxter shares years of wisdom and reflection on what makes fiction work, including essays that were first given as craft talks at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
The essays here range from brilliant thinking on the nature of wonderlands in the fiction of Haruki Murakami and other fabulist writers, to how request moments function in a story. Baxter is equally at home tackling a thorny matter such as charisma (which intersects with political figures like the disastrous forty-fifth US president) as he is bringing new interest to subjects such as list-making in fiction.
Amid these craft essays, an interlude of two personal essays―the story of a horrifying car crash and an introspective “letter to a young poet”―add to the intimate nature of the book. The final essay reflects on a lifetime of writing, and closes with a memorable image of Baxter as a boy, waiting at the window for a parent who never arrives and filling that absence with stories. Wonderlands will stand alongside his prior work as an insightful and lasting work of criticism.
Charles Baxter’s new collection of essays, Wonderlands , joins his other works of nonfiction, Burning Down the House and The Art of Subtext . In the mold of those books, Baxter shares years of wisdom and reflection on what makes fiction work, including essays that were first given as craft talks at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
The essays here range from brilliant thinking on the nature of wonderlands in the fiction of Haruki Murakami and other fabulist writers, to how request moments function in a story. Baxter is equally at home tackling a thorny matter such as charisma (which intersects with political figures like the disastrous forty-fifth US president) as he is bringing new interest to subjects such as list-making in fiction.
Amid these craft essays, an interlude of two personal essays―the story of a horrifying car crash and an introspective “letter to a young poet”―add to the intimate nature of the book. The final essay reflects on a lifetime of writing, and closes with a memorable image of Baxter as a boy, waiting at the window for a parent who never arrives and filling that absence with stories. Wonderlands will stand alongside his prior work as an insightful and lasting work of criticism.
252 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 2022
50 people are currently reading
1130 people want to read
About the author
Charles Baxter
94 books429 followersCharles Baxter was born in Minneapolis and graduated from Macalester College, in Saint Paul. After completing graduate work in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he taught for several years at Wayne State University in Detroit. In 1989, he moved to the Department of English at the University of Michigan--Ann Arbor and its MFA program. He now teaches at the University of Minnesota.
Baxter is the author of 4 novels, 4 collections of short stories, 3 collections of poems, a collection of essays on fiction and is the editor of other works. His works of fiction include Believers , The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), Saul and Patsy , and Through the Safety Net . He lives in Minneapolis.
Baxter is the author of 4 novels, 4 collections of short stories, 3 collections of poems, a collection of essays on fiction and is the editor of other works. His works of fiction include Believers , The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), Saul and Patsy , and Through the Safety Net . He lives in Minneapolis.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
December 6, 2022
Intelligent essays on writing and craft with some memoirish elements. I appreciated the essay about lists. The writing could have been livelier, more lush as he speaks of in the also good essay Lush Life.
August 2, 2022
A brilliant and incredibly soulful guide to fiction craft. Not only does this essay collection contain a lot of highly original ideas about what makes a story come alive for a reader, it also covers a lot of important emotional terrain: what it feels like to be a writer right now (and a middle-aged or older writer in particular). I don't think I've come across any other craft book that captures the mood of this moment so perfectly.
This passage, in particular, will stick with me forever:
"What I'm interested in is...the act of noticing and remembering settings, and objects, and feelings before they go away. Both poets and fiction writers may find themselves remembering and preserving what everyone else is discarding, and by doing so, they may keep alive whatever is fading out....Such remembering is not nostalgia. This is what it means to be alive at a particular time with a functioning memory....You are the walking, living memory of your own time, and you are writing it all down."
I absolutely adored this book.
This passage, in particular, will stick with me forever:
"What I'm interested in is...the act of noticing and remembering settings, and objects, and feelings before they go away. Both poets and fiction writers may find themselves remembering and preserving what everyone else is discarding, and by doing so, they may keep alive whatever is fading out....Such remembering is not nostalgia. This is what it means to be alive at a particular time with a functioning memory....You are the walking, living memory of your own time, and you are writing it all down."
I absolutely adored this book.
November 21, 2022
I can’t get enough of Baxter’s exegesis of various writers. He goes deep; and whenever I’ve finished reading one of his books, my shopping list has grown by at least seven books.
August 27, 2025
So many new ways to consider what I’m trying to do.
November 8, 2022
Excellent book of essays about writing, but also about reading. And Baxter is such a wonderful reader.
September 5, 2022
We can all be grateful that one of America’s finest living crafters of novels and short stories has also taken the time in several books of essays to share his thoughts and understanding about the art of fiction. The latest, WONDERLANDS: ESSAYS ON THE LIFE OF LITERATURE, is worth the time of both writers and serious readers.
Baxter is equal parts intelligence and honesty, and the combination sometimes leaves me clapping my hands, as when in “Inventories and Undoings” he writes: “I am about the last person on earth to defend Tom Wolfe or his fiction, which I find unreadable, as opposed to his early nonfiction, which I loved.”
Baxter’s choices for admiration are admirable: “Saul Bellow said that the best skill for any writer is to be a good noticer.”
In “All the Dark Nights— A Letter,” he quotes Thomas Mann: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
In that same essay, talking about writers’ habitual feelings of fraudulence: “Psychologists have their own names for this set of feelings. (They have clinical names for most of our emotions by now.) They call it imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is endemic to the art of writing because gifts — the clear evidence of talent — are not so clearly associated with writing as they are with music and graphic art . Not everyone has perfect pitch, not everyone can carry a tine, not everyone can draw or create an interesting representation of something on canvas. But almost every goddamn moron can write prose.” That needs editing, but I’m so glad he said it.
In “Things About to Disappear: The Writer as Curator,” Baxter gives us this: “Henry James viewing New York City in 1904 and reporting on it in his book THE AMERICAN SCENE, sees, not a great city, but a principle of colossal destructiveness that feeds upon itself. American culture wastes things and people and places, just out of habit, he notes; if you live long enough, what you saw when you were young will be gone by the time you’re old. Waste is the one thing Americans really believe in. Henry James described the result as one that feels like an amputation from one’s own history. The annihilation of everything, he says, reflects a process that does not even believe in itself. All it really believes in, he says, is money, and enthusiastic destruction that produces more money.”
Baxter brings to his arguments concerns and an array of knowledge that are not common among contemporary literary artists. In one of the most compelling essays in the collection, “Lush Life,” at one point Baxter crosses over into the area of music and pointedly discusses Rachmaninoff and the alto saxophone.
Baxter doesn’t often get down to flat-out advice, but when he does, he’s good at it: “Stories cannot always support emotions without the force of lyric language, but the problem of too much lyric language in a narrative is that, without contrast, it clots the atmosphere. In a narrative, dramatic actions and the everyday objects in the setting will support and cause emotions. Let the objects and the actions carry the feeling. If you want to make a child’s sorrow dramatic, don’t spend time laboriously describing his feelings about his grandmother. Just have someone run over his bicycle.”
That’s from the essay “Toxic Narratives and The Bad Workshop.” By contrast, in imagining a Bad Workshop (a highlight of the book), Baxter pretty much debunks much of the advice students of writing are routinely given or generate themselves in the classroom.
You get a sense of Baxter’s first mission in life — not to think and discourse about fiction but to create it — in the first section of ‘Notes on the Dramatic Image: An Essay in Six Parts.” It’s one of those instances of recollection, imagination and language that leave this reader thinking “Who says nothing is perfect?”
Baxter is equal parts intelligence and honesty, and the combination sometimes leaves me clapping my hands, as when in “Inventories and Undoings” he writes: “I am about the last person on earth to defend Tom Wolfe or his fiction, which I find unreadable, as opposed to his early nonfiction, which I loved.”
Baxter’s choices for admiration are admirable: “Saul Bellow said that the best skill for any writer is to be a good noticer.”
In “All the Dark Nights— A Letter,” he quotes Thomas Mann: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
In that same essay, talking about writers’ habitual feelings of fraudulence: “Psychologists have their own names for this set of feelings. (They have clinical names for most of our emotions by now.) They call it imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is endemic to the art of writing because gifts — the clear evidence of talent — are not so clearly associated with writing as they are with music and graphic art . Not everyone has perfect pitch, not everyone can carry a tine, not everyone can draw or create an interesting representation of something on canvas. But almost every goddamn moron can write prose.” That needs editing, but I’m so glad he said it.
In “Things About to Disappear: The Writer as Curator,” Baxter gives us this: “Henry James viewing New York City in 1904 and reporting on it in his book THE AMERICAN SCENE, sees, not a great city, but a principle of colossal destructiveness that feeds upon itself. American culture wastes things and people and places, just out of habit, he notes; if you live long enough, what you saw when you were young will be gone by the time you’re old. Waste is the one thing Americans really believe in. Henry James described the result as one that feels like an amputation from one’s own history. The annihilation of everything, he says, reflects a process that does not even believe in itself. All it really believes in, he says, is money, and enthusiastic destruction that produces more money.”
Baxter brings to his arguments concerns and an array of knowledge that are not common among contemporary literary artists. In one of the most compelling essays in the collection, “Lush Life,” at one point Baxter crosses over into the area of music and pointedly discusses Rachmaninoff and the alto saxophone.
Baxter doesn’t often get down to flat-out advice, but when he does, he’s good at it: “Stories cannot always support emotions without the force of lyric language, but the problem of too much lyric language in a narrative is that, without contrast, it clots the atmosphere. In a narrative, dramatic actions and the everyday objects in the setting will support and cause emotions. Let the objects and the actions carry the feeling. If you want to make a child’s sorrow dramatic, don’t spend time laboriously describing his feelings about his grandmother. Just have someone run over his bicycle.”
That’s from the essay “Toxic Narratives and The Bad Workshop.” By contrast, in imagining a Bad Workshop (a highlight of the book), Baxter pretty much debunks much of the advice students of writing are routinely given or generate themselves in the classroom.
You get a sense of Baxter’s first mission in life — not to think and discourse about fiction but to create it — in the first section of ‘Notes on the Dramatic Image: An Essay in Six Parts.” It’s one of those instances of recollection, imagination and language that leave this reader thinking “Who says nothing is perfect?”
September 15, 2022
I was lucky enough to have Charlie as a professor for a couple of creative writing classes at Michigan in the late '90s. His erudite lessons and gentle teaching style sticks with me today. So this review might be biased. But not really.
Baxter is not only a great writer who deeply understands the human condition, he is a philosopher of literature, an extensive repository of writing craft know-how, and a profoundly brave writer. He is honest beyond the point of fault and this transmutes into unabridged trust. Rest assured that you are safely in the hands of a wise master when you give yourself over to this collection of essays.
My experience with Wonderlands has cracked open new doors and windows that reveal the beginnings of new understandings for me as a reader and a writer. Baxter covers a lot of ground from curating stories - the moment a writer picks up the pen, he or she shoulders responsibility to preserve our human experience as best as possible - to the plausibility of dreams and what that means to good literature. Along the way, he offers up two reflective personal essays that entertain and allow us to get to know him better.
Why do you need to read this book? Well, you don't need to read it at all if you don't have any ambition of advancing your understanding of literature, or if you've concluded that every viewpoint of storycraft has been discussed to death, or if you're quite positive you understand the nature of all human emotion and risk in fiction as well as real life.
Wonderlands is a cerebral pleasure from start to finish. Charlie's calm and directed voice is consistent throughout. I'm lucky to be able to hear him speak. From the moment I was finished with this book, I felt the conversation was done too soon. He left me wanting more. And isn't that the way it is with all great writers?
Baxter is not only a great writer who deeply understands the human condition, he is a philosopher of literature, an extensive repository of writing craft know-how, and a profoundly brave writer. He is honest beyond the point of fault and this transmutes into unabridged trust. Rest assured that you are safely in the hands of a wise master when you give yourself over to this collection of essays.
My experience with Wonderlands has cracked open new doors and windows that reveal the beginnings of new understandings for me as a reader and a writer. Baxter covers a lot of ground from curating stories - the moment a writer picks up the pen, he or she shoulders responsibility to preserve our human experience as best as possible - to the plausibility of dreams and what that means to good literature. Along the way, he offers up two reflective personal essays that entertain and allow us to get to know him better.
Why do you need to read this book? Well, you don't need to read it at all if you don't have any ambition of advancing your understanding of literature, or if you've concluded that every viewpoint of storycraft has been discussed to death, or if you're quite positive you understand the nature of all human emotion and risk in fiction as well as real life.
Wonderlands is a cerebral pleasure from start to finish. Charlie's calm and directed voice is consistent throughout. I'm lucky to be able to hear him speak. From the moment I was finished with this book, I felt the conversation was done too soon. He left me wanting more. And isn't that the way it is with all great writers?
September 22, 2022
If you have any interest in reading fiction, you'll get a lot out of this set of essays. Even if you're a writer, have an MFA, etc., you should enjoy Baxter's personal observations and stories. Because I was on vacation when I got the book, I slurped it up in two days. But the book would probably be better read slowly, pausing after each chapter to take in what Baxter says.
To be sure, he starts with a lot of commonplace observations: secrets make good stories, modern literature often has a dreamlike quality, etc. But in each case he takes apart interesting instances and suggests why certain authors make certain things work, sometimes surprisingly well. I came away with a list of novels I want to read now. (I previously read and enjoyed Baxter's book, The Feast of Love.)
To be sure, he starts with a lot of commonplace observations: secrets make good stories, modern literature often has a dreamlike quality, etc. But in each case he takes apart interesting instances and suggests why certain authors make certain things work, sometimes surprisingly well. I came away with a list of novels I want to read now. (I previously read and enjoyed Baxter's book, The Feast of Love.)
November 23, 2022
Trump lives rent free in this guy’s head. That’s practically all he talks about in this book. Him and Republicans. He has a whole chapter devoted to him about Charisma and Narcissism. Funny how he makes no mention of Obama in this regard. Nor does he mention the many failures of Biden or the generalized Narcissistic behavior of today’s left. No mention of the Antifa — literal terrorists. The me me me generation. This guy has no backbone. He’s preaching to his own choir. There’s even a chapter where he talks about how an overworked driver of his got into a wreck and broke his back and called Charlie and he refused to answer his calls because the guy almost killed him by accident from wet roads. Sounds like an insufferable prick. No wonder is wife left him.
July 15, 2024
Another helpful book on craft from the inimitable Charles Baxter. Appreciated how he dedicated certain chapters (essays) to former students, especially since one of them was Sally Franzen, whose second novel was released as I was reading this.
Appreciated his insights on creating narrative urgency when the writing is pretty yet it feels like nothing's happening. Short answer: need a Captain Happens, a one-way gate, a clock and a time bomb.
Also helpful are his breakdowns of request moments, of inventories and undoings, of how to make dramatic images haunt a reader.
Appreciated his insights on creating narrative urgency when the writing is pretty yet it feels like nothing's happening. Short answer: need a Captain Happens, a one-way gate, a clock and a time bomb.
Also helpful are his breakdowns of request moments, of inventories and undoings, of how to make dramatic images haunt a reader.
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December 18, 2022“The hardest part of being a writer is learning how to survive the dark nights of the soul,” Charles Baxter writes about halfway through his new book, Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature. This isn’t Baxter’s first book about writing and the life of the writer as an artist."
Read my review at the Brooklyn Rail.
https://brooklynrail.org/2022/09/book...
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October 17, 2022After just three essays, I'm smitten. It's such a stunning book, and he comes through in a way I didn't feel when I've read his fiction. I'll probably comment when I'm done.
When a book moves me I email the writer and sometimes they reply, if they're not too famous. I've had some lovely surprise replies. Joan Frank was incredible. I recommend it.
When a book moves me I email the writer and sometimes they reply, if they're not too famous. I've had some lovely surprise replies. Joan Frank was incredible. I recommend it.
February 21, 2023
What I find most interesting about this craft book is how Baxter takes ideas at the fringes of fiction and creates categories that have existed all along. I'm not sure how else to put it. The essays are insightful and have pushed me to consider new ways of thinking about stories. It makes me excited to write.
April 22, 2024
More analytical than prescriptive, Baxter calls attention to the things that make literature, and life itself, compelling.
He writes memorable analysis -- I'm sure to recall his essays on lists, toxic narratives, dreams, and images, when analyzing what I'm reading (or if I ever decide to put pen to paper).
He writes memorable analysis -- I'm sure to recall his essays on lists, toxic narratives, dreams, and images, when analyzing what I'm reading (or if I ever decide to put pen to paper).
July 16, 2025
10 stars! With small anecdotal stories of his life, Baxter not only proves he is a great teacher but a simple human witnessing life going on around him, which ultimately makes him and any storyteller a better writer once he pinpoints why these things happen. With the most gut wrenching anecdote in the end, we are given a tragic but understood lesson in storytelling.
February 15, 2024
Really enjoyed this collection, though I'm writing this review a couple weeks after finishing it and don't recall much of the substance aside from the idea that plot is something that grows organically, is discovered, rather than something the writer wrangles into place and imposes on the work.
August 7, 2022
I've found the best books about writing are equal parts truth-telling and wisdom... this book nails the balance. The essay 'All the Dark Nights' is brilliant and I'll be returning to it often.
August 14, 2022
The best book on writing that I have read in a long time.
October 14, 2022
Always brilliant and entertaining Charles Baxter. Will read this again and again.
November 10, 2022
Yes! Brilliant and charming and insightful. Charles Baxter not only makes me want to be a better writer, he makes me want to be a better person.
Want to read
April 9, 2023Slate podcast (Working) recommendation
June 14, 2023
Read this book!
June 28, 2023
I learn a ton from any craft book by Charlie Baxter.
September 11, 2023
Some essays were truly fantastic and kept me hanging onto each word. Others felt flat and a drag to read.
September 19, 2023
hope to reread this a few times in my life
April 28, 2025
i'm a reader not a writer so not the primary audience for these essays parts of which often elude me..but i liked his voice and the insights into the writing process which i did absorb.
June 26, 2025
honestly just a fantastic book for teaching creative writing. earnest review
October 3, 2022
Oof, I straight up hated most of this. But then, as a writer of genre fiction, I do not need a braided essay to convince me that having a plot is worthwhile! I did enjoy reading "On the Plausibility of Dreams" and found the section on Vertigo illuminating. But lord, the musings. I have suffered through a PhD's worth of academic prose, which is not a fate I'd wish on anyone, but at least it generally had a strong argument. I found much of the prose empty rather than elliptical, and the insights on structure in the first half of the book have, for the most part, been boiled down into stronger stuff by those dreadful hacks, screenwriters. I do think Baxter is on firmer footing talking about the uncanny in realist (or unrealist, as he would have it) literature, and toward the end, I grew to appreciate some of his whimsical terminology. And I bet he's a fun classroom lecturer--name-dropping, colorful anecdotes, and apposite quotations galore! But this is not the craft book for me.
*A month later, I feel compelled to knock off a star for the bewilderingly racist "What Happens in Hell." At first blush it appears unrelated to the others, but seen another way, it is the book's traumatic heart and the other essays are mostly window dressing. This essay is going to stick with me forever, so props to that--but mostly as an example of the horrors of unprocessed trauma and un-self-aware storytelling. Also because I sat through a workshop in which this essay was pointedly not discussed, despite (or because of?) the presence of writers of color at the table, I am now convinced that what everyone says about MFAs being racist is true! So thanks for that, CB.
*A month later, I feel compelled to knock off a star for the bewilderingly racist "What Happens in Hell." At first blush it appears unrelated to the others, but seen another way, it is the book's traumatic heart and the other essays are mostly window dressing. This essay is going to stick with me forever, so props to that--but mostly as an example of the horrors of unprocessed trauma and un-self-aware storytelling. Also because I sat through a workshop in which this essay was pointedly not discussed, despite (or because of?) the presence of writers of color at the table, I am now convinced that what everyone says about MFAs being racist is true! So thanks for that, CB.
November 13, 2022
Baxter's writing about writing is nearly as beautiful and powerful as his fiction writing. This book is profound. How? Baxter's wisdom, breadth, and depth of reading are evident on every page. He loves literature and we readers can feel that in our bones when reading Baxter. And he has insights in each chapter. Here's one: "For the ironist, everybody sooner or later proves to be a hypocrite. Everyone traffics in fraud" (154). Here's another: "When does a mere listing of objects acquire pathos and unexpected grandeur? At the moment when those objects are about to disappear, when they are about to be gone. There is no good word for this particular feeling or mode, but it has to do with the beauty of an obsolete, aged, and weathered thing" (51).
September 19, 2023
A wonderful collection of Baxter's thoughtful essays on literature, short stories, and writing techniques. This book is appropriate for those who love to read as well as those who write. Baxter's essays are always thoughtful, provocative, and inspiring.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews