San Antonio College Library

"From deeply personal perspectives, two dozen established writers ponder the mystery of their art and such fundamentals as: What is a genuine writing impulse? Why does good writing work? How is writing learned? What is the role of craft and technique? Who is meant to be a writer? How is close reading related to good writing? The volume is peppered with critical perspectives and practical advice, yet its special richness and inspiration lie in the...

"It is difficult to write well even in one language. Yet a rich body of translingual literature - by authors who write in more than one language or in a language other than their primary one - exists, The Translingual Imagination is a pioneering study of the phenomenon." "Opening with an overview of this vast subject, Steven G. Kellman then looks at the differences between ambilinguals - those who write authoritatively in more than one language -...

"While gaps in the biographical record for William Shakespeare continue to confound literary scholars, McCrea here concludes that he was, indeed, the playwright and poet we have always thought him to be. This literary forensics case follows the trail of evidence in the historical record and in the plays and poems themselves. It investigates the counterclaims for other authors and the suppositions that the real author of the works must have been a...

"A. Alvarez is the ideal guide to understanding how writing, reading, listening, and living contribute to the writer's art, and his book, based on a lifetime's experience, gives us a satisfying account of why all enduring works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction begin and end with the writer's voice."--Jacket.

Oates discusses the subjects most important to the narrative craft, touching on topics such as inspiration, memory, self-criticism, and "the unique power of the unconscious." On a more personal note, she speaks of childhood inspirations, offers advice to young writers, and discusses the wildly varying states of mind of a writer at work. Oates also pays homage to those she calls her "significant predecessors" and discusses the importance of reading...

Thackeray's development as a book reviewer, journalist, art exhibition critic, short story writer, satirical essayist, and novelist--is a development that culminates in the creation of his masterpiece, one of the glories of English imaginative writing: Vanity Fair. Articulating the connections among these vigorous and lively youthful works, and the growth of Thackeray as an increasingly profound participant-observer, Harden reveals the exuberant imaginative...

"There was, in the nineteenth century, a distinction made between "writers" and "authors," Susan S. Williams notes, the former defined as those who composed primarily from mere experience or observation rather than from the unique genius or imagination of the latter. If women were more often cast as writers than authors by the literary establishment, there also emerged in magazines, advice books, fictional accounts, and letters a specific model of...

The field of Mark Twain biography has been dominated by men, and Samuel Clemens himself - riverboat pilot, Western correspondent, silver prospector, world traveler - has been traditionally portrayed as a man's man. The publication of Laura E. Skandera-Trombley's Mark Twain in the Company of Women, however, marks a significant departure from conventional scholarship. Skandera-Trombley, the first woman to write a scholarly biography of Mark Twain, contends...

Examines the effects of alcohol on the life and work of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and O'Neill, tracing how the initial positive benefits of the drug were lost as drink eventually took its toll on the writers.