The Art Of Telling: Essays On Fiction
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
What separates a story from mere sequence of events? In The Art of Telling: Essays on Fiction, one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary critics assembles a brilliant collection of essays that argue for the primacy of narrative as a fundamental human act, examining how novelists from Henry James to Nathaniel Hawthorne construct meaning through the careful architecture of prose. Kermode dissects the mechanisms of fiction with forensic precision — the role of secrecy in the text, the reader's complicity in interpretation, and the tension between what a narrative reveals and what it deliberately conceals — presenting a body of criticism that is as intellectually thrilling as the novels it scrutinises. Rooted in the tradition of continental literary theory yet always anchored to close, careful reading, Kermode's prose is a model of critical elegance: rigorous without being remote, and consistently illuminating in its insights. The Art of Telling sits alongside his landmark work The Sense of an Ending as essential reading for anyone serious about understanding how fiction operates on its readers — and it leaves one wondering just how much of what we call story is a sophisticated act of mutual deception between writer and world.
Author: Frank Kermode
Format: Hardback
Published: 1983, Harvard University Press
Genre: Essays
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
What separates a story from mere sequence of events? In The Art of Telling: Essays on Fiction, one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary critics assembles a brilliant collection of essays that argue for the primacy of narrative as a fundamental human act, examining how novelists from Henry James to Nathaniel Hawthorne construct meaning through the careful architecture of prose. Kermode dissects the mechanisms of fiction with forensic precision — the role of secrecy in the text, the reader's complicity in interpretation, and the tension between what a narrative reveals and what it deliberately conceals — presenting a body of criticism that is as intellectually thrilling as the novels it scrutinises. Rooted in the tradition of continental literary theory yet always anchored to close, careful reading, Kermode's prose is a model of critical elegance: rigorous without being remote, and consistently illuminating in its insights. The Art of Telling sits alongside his landmark work The Sense of an Ending as essential reading for anyone serious about understanding how fiction operates on its readers — and it leaves one wondering just how much of what we call story is a sophisticated act of mutual deception between writer and world.