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It may seem like ridiculously apparent advice, but it’s one of those bits of ridiculously apparent counsel that bears repeating over and over again: In order to be a great, or even good, writer, you have to read. Read a lot. And read good writing. In Francine Prose’s recent bestseller Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, she proposes going a step further and reading in a more careful, thoughtful way. After all, what good is recognizing that Virginia Woolf wrote beautifully complex sentences if you don’t perceive how she pulled them off?

Prose takes the reader chapter by chapter through respective parts of writing that may be examined upon a close reading of a text. And they’re not all as simple or mutual as reputation arc or the use of active verbs. For example, how often have you thought when it comes to paragraph breaks? How does a paragraph break affect a reader, and how ought to you determine when to break them? I get the sentiment that most writers, particularly new writers, don’t think regarding this at all. If they did, they might say something like “they just break naturally” or “when a new thought begins.”

But the point of Prose’s observations is that books and stories don’t write themselves. Every letter and comma is the result of a decision by a writer–a decision that could have been made differently and changed the meaning of an entire sentence, passage, or story. Try taking a piece of your own writing and playing with the paragraph breaks. Free yourself from the constraints of your firstborn draft; you may always restore it. See how breaking differently makes the text read differently. As Prose puts it, “merely thinking in regards to ‘the paragraph’ puts us in front of the game.” She makes the following lovely analogy: “The paragraph could be understood as a sort of literary respiration, with each paragraph as an extended–in a great deal of cases, very extended–breath.”

It’s difficult to describe a book such as this by quoting it is author, since her entire aim is to convince you to read other authors. You may not see a paragraph as a breath; you may see it as a story or a question or a piece of information. But in order to discover what role paragraphs play in your own writing, it’s utile to read as some other writers as possible, and stop to see what paragraphs mean to their work.

Prose cites for the most part older, classic works (though galore are reasonably obscure), and galore more contemporary examples would have been nice–but they likewise would have caused a nightmarish circumstance in her publisher’s permissions department. The classics, of course, have a great deal to teach, and studying them is less likely to make you think, “But I don’t want to copy [insert dead white male here].” But in the rather overpowering “Books To Be Read Immediately” list at the end, you’ll find Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son and Alice Munro’s Selected Stories alongside Austin and Hemingway.

Let’s say you’re writing a thriller, and the last thing you want to do is be seen as just another Dan Brown wanna-be, so you’re staying as far away as possible from anything remotely related to The Da Vinci Code. That doesn’t mean you can’t try to emulate it is page-turning style. Read it closely, and look at the paragraphs. The sentences. The chapter breaks. Read other thrillers you like as well, so you’ll feel less fear of copying one peculiar author… but if you have your own story to tell, and your own style, that won’t take place anyway. Good writers may learn from one another’s work without committing plagiarism or losing their own voices.

In the opening chapters of Reading Like a Writer, I found myself frustrated that Prose was bombarding me with examples without supplying rather sufficient comprehensible statement of why she chose them. But, as she might have predicted, this bothered me less as I continued to read–because I found myself more and more capable to follow her counsel and read cautiously (a nice experience for an individual who’s used to rushing to finish a chapter before the next subway stop).

A few final notes:

• Learning to read cautiously doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time. You may and will have to still lose yourself in a good book without stopping to make an analyzation of the effectiveness of it is use of gesture. But just as architects may both study the construction of great buildings and admire their beauty, writers may study the construction of outstanding works, and apply galore of the proficiencies they see to their own writing, without giving up the joy of reading. If you want only the latter, you’re not more than willing to work hard sufficient to be a successful writer.
• As it is subtitle suggests, Reading Like a Writer is not only a book for writers. I’ve commended it to friends who are avid readers, because persons who read a lot and like to talk about what they read are likewise eager to grasp why they like what they like. Prose’s writing is accessible and engaging, not pedantic or dry. She’s expressing, more than anything, her love of great literature, and that’s not a sentiment exclusive to writers.
• Francine Prose really, actually likes Chekhov’s short stories. She devotes an entire chapter to why she likes him so much, one reason being that he was skillful sufficient to break each “rule” she’s ever heard of in writing, including a good deal of she’s cited antecedently in her very own book. I agree that he’s a master of the short story; you will have to find out for yourself. If you already recognise you aren’t a Chekhov fan, skip that chapter. But read the rest. And then go read all the books on that “Books To Be Read Immediately” list.

Historical Dictionary American Dictionaries Literature

The Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater provides users with an accessible single-volume reference tool covering Portuguese-speaking Brazil and the 16 Spanish-speaking countries of continental Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Entries for authors, ranging from the early colonial amount of time to the present, give succinct biographical data and an account of the author’s literary production, with queer attention to their most prominent works and where they belong in literary history. The introduction provides a review of Latin American creative writing of recognized artisti value and theater as a whole while distinguished dictionary entries for each country offer clear or deep perception into the history of national literatures. Entries for literary terms, movements, and genres serve to supplement these commentaries, and an extensive bibliography points the way for further reading. The comprehensive view and elaborated selective information received from all these elements will make this book of use to the general-interest reader, Latin American studies students, and the academic specialist.

About the AuthorRichard Young is professor emeritus of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada, where he taught for closely 40 years. His edited volumes include Latin American Postmodernisms (1997), Music, Popular Culture, Identities (2002), and, in collaboration with Stephen Hart, Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies (2003). He was editor of Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hisp_nicos from 1996 until 2003. Odile Cisneros is associate professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies and the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta. She co-edited Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos (2007), and she is likewise an active literary translator and has published book-length translations of work by RZgis Bonvicino, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, and Jaroslav Seifert.

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