Revisionaries: What we can learn from the lost, unfinished & just plain bad work of great writers

[anarresa]

Revisionaries: What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers
by Kristopher Jansma
3 stars

Jansma is a writing professor and at the end of each author’s chapter is a writing exercise. I am not a writer, but I liked the deep dive into the history and unfinished work of different authors. The authors are well known in Western Literature, but with a bit of variety: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Louisa May Alcott, Octavia Butler, Sylvia Plath, Ralph Ellison…

Most are 20th Century authors so there are interview excerpts as well as the papers from academic collections to describe their writing process and the problematic work(s) that is the focus of the essay. Jansma assumes the reader (or aspiring writer) is familiar with every author listed, though he does include some details to remind you. There were a couple authors I didn’t know, and several more I never read – this didn’t impact my enjoyment of the essay. Some authors had a more interesting story than others, but every chapter was short so the reader isn’t stuck with a boring author. The reader doesn’t get a deep dive into a favorite author either, each essay is about an unfinished work and the circumstances that prevented the author from finishing – that’s it.