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A review by bibliole
The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes by Joan Silber
1.0
With a little more time editing this might have been a good book, but as it stands now I didn't feel that it was worth the money that I spent on it. First of all, Sibler does not really define what she means by "time", and because of this she runs back and forwards between all sorts of definition of time in fiction which leaves the text too unstructured for my taste.
Secondly, the light she sheds on "time in fiction" struck me as very much surface level stuff, and the few times something interesting came up it was rarely expounded upon.
Also, her chapter on "Fabulous Time" was unconvincing and surprising in that it emphasized the importance of circularity in what she calls "unrealistic novels" - it's surprising to the extent that it's a pretty structuralist definition for something that is supposed to be "fabulous" and unconventional.
And lastly, some of the editing choices annoyed me. For example, the strange and recurring habit of writing: "what the Buddhist calls transience", which strikes me as such an odd thing to write since "transience" is just a plain old English word with Latin roots. If the author had written the actual word used to mean more or less "transience" in Buddhist doctrine it would have made more sense, but the way it is written makes it seem like the word "transience" itself is somehow of Buddhist origin and that the concept of something being transient is somehow unfathomable to the Anglo-American mind.
Maybe I'm a little harsh on this book because I enjoyed "The Art of Perspective" so much. It's not a bad book, and lots of people might find some use of it, but I have to give it one star because it left me disappointed.
Secondly, the light she sheds on "time in fiction" struck me as very much surface level stuff, and the few times something interesting came up it was rarely expounded upon.
Also, her chapter on "Fabulous Time" was unconvincing and surprising in that it emphasized the importance of circularity in what she calls "unrealistic novels" - it's surprising to the extent that it's a pretty structuralist definition for something that is supposed to be "fabulous" and unconventional.
And lastly, some of the editing choices annoyed me. For example, the strange and recurring habit of writing: "what the Buddhist calls transience", which strikes me as such an odd thing to write since "transience" is just a plain old English word with Latin roots. If the author had written the actual word used to mean more or less "transience" in Buddhist doctrine it would have made more sense, but the way it is written makes it seem like the word "transience" itself is somehow of Buddhist origin and that the concept of something being transient is somehow unfathomable to the Anglo-American mind.
Maybe I'm a little harsh on this book because I enjoyed "The Art of Perspective" so much. It's not a bad book, and lots of people might find some use of it, but I have to give it one star because it left me disappointed.