Top Craft Book Picks from Writers, Illustrators, and Editors at Kindling Words East, January 2017

I had the fun opportunity to lecture this weekend at Kindling Words East in Essex, Vermont, to an audience of writers, illustrators, and editors. No pressure! My topic was on voice, and specifically, the voice of the narrator of a novel, whether that narrator is a character within a story, a non-character whose storytelling voice is perceptible as a narrator, or even a hidden behind-the-scenes presence orchestrating and interpreting events more stealthily. I drew heavily from 13 Ways of Viewing the Novel by Jane Smiley as my source (a book I blogged about earlier). I found it densely packed with probing insights into the form and origins of the novel, and in particular, thought-provoking discussions of the innovations that gave us point of view (and the politics of point of view), and of the narrative consciousness that permeates a work. So it was perfectly suited to the lecture I wanted to give.

I gave away a copy of 13 Ways as a door prize, and wondered what was the best gimmick to employ in obtaining drawing entries and soliciting a winner. Middle grade author Erin Dionne suggested a great strategy: have the attendees who want to enter the drawing write the name of their favorite craft book on a slip of paper. Draw a winner from among the slips, and compile the data into a list of recommendations. I'm delighted to do so.

Approximately two-thirds of the attendees put a suggestion in the hat. I'll list the offerings below with the number of votes I obtained. I was pleased to see that I'd read a decent handful of these titles, but I have many more on this list to read. Knowing now that they were each some writer or illustrator's favorite pick is all the endorsement I need to give them a chance.

Leading the pack was Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott with 7 votes, followed closely by On Writing by Stephen King. Editor Cheryl Klein, who joined us this year, had three votes for The Magic Words and two votes for Second Sight. Other two-vote books included Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, Story Genius by Lisa Cron, From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler, and Writing with Pictures by Uri Shulevitz. Jane Yolen and Martin Salisbury both had two votes, but for different titles.

Here's the full list. I've put asterisks by those that I've read and loved, which is more of an embarrassing confession than a boast. Clearly, I have work to do!

TITLE	AUTHOR	VOTES
Bird by Bird *	Anne Lamott	7
On Writing *	Stephen King	6
The Magic Words	Cheryl Klein	3
Writing Picture Books	Ann Whitford Paul	2
Save the Cat	Blake Snyder	2
Second Sight	Cheryl Klein	2
Story Genius	Lisa Cron	2
From Where You Dream	Robert Olen Butler	2
Writing with Pictures	Uri Shulevitz	2
The Shape of Content	Ben Shahn	1
If You Want to Write	Brenda Ueland	1
The Writer's Journey	Christopher Vogler	1
Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom	ed. Leonard  Marcus	1
Creating Short Fiction	Damon Knight	1
Art & Fear	David Bayles & Ted Orland	1
Catching the Big Fish	David Lynch	1
Reflections on the Magic of Writing	Diana Wynne Jones	1
Elements of Style	E.B. White	1
On Writing	Eurdora Welty	1
Take Joy *	Jane Yolen	1
Touch Magic	Jane Yolen	1
The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers *	John Gardner	1
The Anatomy of Story *	John Truby	1
Syllabus	Linda Barry	1
Brain Science	Lisa Cron	1
Walking on Water *	Madeline L'Engle	1
Children's Picture Books	Martin Salisbury	1
100 Great Children's Picture Books	Martin Salisbury	1
The First Five Pages	Noah Lukeman	1
Characters & Viewpoint	Orson Scott Card	1
Self Editing in Fiction	Renni Brown & Dave King	1
About Writing	Samuel Delaney	1
Freeplay	Stephen Nachmanovitch	1
The Creative Habit	Twyla Tharp	1
Steering the Craft *	Ursula LeGuin	1
Writing the Australian Crawl	William Stafford	1

The Many Pleasures of the Novel

I've been devouring 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley, and marking it up like a Bible for its densely packed gems of clear critical insights and unapologetic opinions. The book is the fruit of a process Smiley underwent of reading 100 novels, ranging across centuries, cultures, and styles. She's got me salivating. I want to do the same thing -- make a very deliberate selection of acclaimed, significant, diverse, groundbreaking titles and read them in both a curricular and a personal fashion. 100. Why not? Once I finish poring over this book. And get my life in order. And deadlines met. Sigh.

Jane Smiley is the first author I ever met. Ever laid eyes on. I was a sophomore at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (or was I a junior?), and I'd won an essay contest at school. Smiley was invited in as the author who gave an address at the awards ceremony, then handed each of us our award certificates and envelopes containing checks with the award money. (I totally entered for laundry quarters.) I thought her reading (from Moo) and remarks were interesting, but I remember a twinge of disappointment that when I met her, she was a normal human, like me. Both of us had to choose, reluctantly, what to wear that day. Both of us felt vaguely awkward at the ceremonial requirement that we shake hands on a stage and she hand me a paper. I think I wanted her to have a visible, glowing authorial aura. Perhaps the discovery that she didn't was a step on my path toward thinking, heck, maybe I could write a book, too.

Reading 13 Ways unveiled the aura in all its luminosity. I'm mesmerized by the flow of her insights into the novel, at the precision of her thinking, and by both the profundity and the obvious validity of her multifaceted perspectives on this thing I've always loved and now devoted my career to. Am I gushing?  I don't care.

On page 86, Smiley catalogs a long list of the "many pleasures a novelist has to offer" (slight paraphrase).  I reached for my notebook to write them down and mull upon them. I don't presume she meant her list to be exhaustive. In any case I found myself listing a few additional pleasures, meaningful to me, that weren't listed. I hope they're distinct from those that are already there. And I wondered, gentle readers, what have I missed? What other pleasures do you take in books that don't appear on the Smiley-Berry list? (Egads.)

Jane Smiley's List of Pleasures to be Found in the the Novel:

1. the unusual pleasure of the exotic 
2. the intellectual pleasure of historical understanding
3. the humane pleasure of psychological insight into one or more characters
4. the simple pleasure of entertainment and suspense
5. the exuberant pleasure of laughter and trickery
6. the guilty pleasure of gossip
7. the tempting pleasure of secrecy and intimacy
8. the confessional pleasure of acknowledged sin and attempted redemption
9. the polemical pleasure of indignation
10. the rigorous pleasure of intellectual analysis
11. the reassuring pleasure of identifying with one's nation or people
12. the vicarious pleasure of romance

Her use of descriptive adjectives is strategic here; we'd have a much weaker grasp on what she's trying to say the novel actually does in our human brains if we merely listed the pleasures without hinting at what they do to us.

Here are few more that occurred to me as I took my diligent school-girl notes.

Julie Berry's Addenda to Jane Smiley's List of Pleasures

1. the sensual pleasure of place and atmosphere
2. the emotion-coloring pleasures of mood
3. the romantic pleasures of bucolic nature, heroism, idealism, and social simplicity
4. the nostalgic pleasure of a remembered past 
5. the subversive pleasure of lunacy and nonsense
6. the deductive pleasure of puzzle-solving, code-breaking, and mystery-unraveling
7. the existential pleasure of nothingness, the vertigo of eroded ego in a vast, unfeeling cosmos
8. the cynical pleasure of irony
9. the erotic pleasure of horror
10. the spectator pleasures of vicariously but safely experiencing violence and combat
11. the aesthetic pleasure of savoring any literary excellence found therein
12. the therapeutic pleasure or catharsis of release, identification, and/or empathy
13. the obsessive pleasure of infatuation with a character or a group of them 

It's not a bad gig, really, being in the business of offering a platter of pleasures to readers the world over. I can think of worse jobs.

I'm neither judging nor sneering at any of these pleasures. All are valid and available. Have I overlapped? Have I strayed off the rails? What pleasures have I missed?