All rights reserved Review by Kirkus Book ReviewĪ novelist tries her hand at literary theory.Venturing into the world of narrative theory, Alison (Creative Writing/Univ. It would do a disservice to this work to pigeonhole it as "literary criticism" the study is filled with clarity and wit, underlain with formidable erudition. She begins by urging the reader to "look at text close-up" and examine "the tiniest particles a reader encounters: letters, phonemes." She then assesses how "different types or lengths of words, sentences, and speeds lets you design a narrative as variegated as a garden." As full texts come under examination, Alison reveals recurring shapes that "coincide with fundamental patterns in nature," rather than "the plotted arc," including waves in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus meandering paths, like rivers or snail trails, that allow the reader to "wander a bit, look about, pause," in Marguerite Duras's The Lover, and spirals, akin to both DNA and the Milky Way, in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street. The shape in question is the "dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides." Alison would have readers conceive of other dramatic shapes, which she finds by closely examining particular texts. "How curious that a single shape has governed our stories for years," ponders Alison (Nine Island), a novelist and University of Virginia creative writing teacher, in her boundlessly inventive look at narrative form. Her observations of the sensory aspects of literature are indulgent and delectable, and sure to elevate the experience of readers and writers alike.-Courtney Eathorne Copyright 2019 Booklist From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Alison dissects each concept and then gives a range of examples of how these trends manifest in literature, showcasing the work of authors including Tobias Wolff, Stuart Dybek, Joyce Carol Oates, and Philip Roth. The honeycomb describes stories with a webbed and repeating backbone. To explain the sunburst, Alison presents Gabriel García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), wherein readers learn of the protagonist's murder in the first few lines. The spiral conveys the centripetal strengthening of a story as action repeats and worsens toward the eye of the storm. The ribbon represents stories languid and satisfying in their slow bending toward the end. She focuses on a few specific patterns: the ribbon, the spiral, the sunburst, and the honeycomb. In this wholly original analysis of style, novelist Alison (Nine Island, 2016) explores the forms and shapes that narrative can take, pushing the bounds of storytelling beyond the infamous pyramid of climax. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let's leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her "museum of specimens" include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison. Sebald's Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc- or, in nature, wave. But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculosexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep moti. Meander, spiral, explode Design and pattern in narrativeĪs Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: "For centuries there's been one path through fiction we're most likely to travel- one we're actually told to follow-and that's the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides.
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