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A review by steveatwaywords
The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
Wharton's work makes clear her expertise as both an erudite reader and master crafter of fiction--at least for its time. As the modernist novel rises in popularity around her a century ago, we can almost imagine the brickwork she is laying in defense of more traditional craftsmanship.
And it is difficult to fault her criteria: tight prose, efficient length, necessary action, and the like: all the qualities that have ever made for the traditional finely-honed classic work. Along the way she cites thoroughly and wonderfully the works of James, Defoe, Flaubert, Hugo, Tolstoy, and others. The final chapters are devoted almost exclusively to the epic (though at her writing still incomplete) Proust.
Where the work suffers is the categorizations of prose (the novel of manners, the short story, etc.), the names of which are--even in her own arguments--too limiting to illuminate her points. Over and over, while her fundamental advice is sound, she finds hybrids and exceptions to her previous declarations of form and type. That Aristotelian urge to classify once again works to over-simplify, and this from a mind who clearly understands the subtlety of works.
Between this and her (understandably) conservative resistance to new forms emerging, a prejudice she does not expound or examine overmuch but which nonetheless is clear from her opening remarks, possibly even justifying the writing of the book itself, the book is merely an interesting read for its analyses of authors. As a book on the contemporary writing of fiction, however, we may learn little from it.
And it is difficult to fault her criteria: tight prose, efficient length, necessary action, and the like: all the qualities that have ever made for the traditional finely-honed classic work. Along the way she cites thoroughly and wonderfully the works of James, Defoe, Flaubert, Hugo, Tolstoy, and others. The final chapters are devoted almost exclusively to the epic (though at her writing still incomplete) Proust.
Where the work suffers is the categorizations of prose (the novel of manners, the short story, etc.), the names of which are--even in her own arguments--too limiting to illuminate her points. Over and over, while her fundamental advice is sound, she finds hybrids and exceptions to her previous declarations of form and type. That Aristotelian urge to classify once again works to over-simplify, and this from a mind who clearly understands the subtlety of works.
Between this and her (understandably) conservative resistance to new forms emerging, a prejudice she does not expound or examine overmuch but which nonetheless is clear from her opening remarks, possibly even justifying the writing of the book itself, the book is merely an interesting read for its analyses of authors. As a book on the contemporary writing of fiction, however, we may learn little from it.