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RECENT PUBLICATIONS
"Words Made Flesh: A Conversation with David Jauss" by Philip Graham appeared on 3 Quarks Daily on Nov. 14, 2024. See https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/11/words-made-flesh-a-conversation-with-david-jauss.html
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Words Made Flesh: The Craft of Fiction, my second collection of essays on writing fiction, was published by Press 53 (www.press53.com) in October, 2024. Here is the preface, which describes the book's premise and contents:
PREFACE
The premise behind this book is the same as that behind my previous collection of essays on the craft of fiction, Alone With All That Could Happen: On Writing Fiction (Revised & Expanded Edition): in order to improve our fiction, we need first to recognize and understand the vast panorama of techniques and strategies available to us. Unfortunately, many creative writing textbooks and essay collections take a prescriptive rather than a descriptive approach to matters of craft and thus restrict our sense of what's possible in fiction. In the six essays in this book, I have tried to expand our understanding of the craft of fiction by describing what writers have actually done rather than by prescribing what they should do. As a result, the essays take issue with some of the reigning dogmas of the day, as expressed both in standard creative writing guides and in the practice of many contemporary fiction writers.
In "Homo Fictus vs. Homo Sapiens," I challenge the oft-repeated advice that writers need to know "everything" about our characters' inner and outer lives, from their deepest thoughts to their preferred brand of underwear. I argue that this advice leads us to create characters whose inner lives lack the complexity and mystery of real people and whose outer lives are so dense with naturalistic detail that we lose sight of the characters' essence. I call the attitude behind this advice "Positive Capability," in contrast to Keats's "Negative Capability," which he defines as the all-important ability of "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." I also dispute conventional claims about the "roundness" and "reality" of fictional characters and the notion of a fixed, singular desire as the sole motivation for a character's behavior.
In "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Abstraction?: Conveying Emotion in Fiction," I question the ubiquitous admonition to "go in fear of abstractions," as Ezra Pound advised, and the likewise ubiquitous commandment to avoid what John Ruskin dubbed "the pathetic fallacy." The essay defines and provides examples of a wide range of strategies—abstract, concrete, and figurative—for conveying emotion and examines their pros and cons.
In "The Art of Description," I go beyond the commonplace observation that literary description is "painting in words" to draw parallels between five specific movements in visual art—realism, impressionism, expressionism, post-impressionism, and cubism—and their equivalents in fiction, thereby defining and illustrating five different approaches we can take to write effective description.
In "'What We See With': Redefining Plot," I discuss the limitations of the standard monolithic definition of a plot and its focus on causality, character change, and what Jane Alison calls "masculo-sexual structure," then I provide definitions, examples, and analyses of seven alternative non-causal forms of plot that have been employed by masterly fiction writers throughout literary history and that can enrich our own fiction.
In "Returning Characters to Life: What Chekhov Teaches Us About Endings," I critique the narrow definition of closure that underlies the vast majority of endings in contemporary fiction and analyze twelve alternative strategies for endings that Chekhov invented and that we can consider using in our own stories and novels.
And, finally, in "The Flowers of Afterthought: Premises and Strategies for Revision," I point out that what many writers consider revision is actually little more than editing (and usually premature editing) and I present a comprehensive survey of ten premises and fourteen specific strategies that will help us revise our work effectively.
There is another premise behind this book besides the one I've described above, and it is a premise Jean Rhys beautifully expressed in her Paris Review interview. "Listen to me," she said. "All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake." I second Rhys's injunction that we feed the lake of literature, though not her overly modest opinion of her own contribution to it. If her extraordinary fiction added only a mere trickle to the lake of literature, few of us can claim to have added more than a single molecule of water. I have done my best to feed the lake through my fiction, but I have also tried to feed it through my nearly five decades of teaching. I hope the information and advice in this book will help you feed the lake.
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A revised and expanded edition of Alone With All That Could Happen: On Writing Fiction, my first collection of essays on the craft of fiction, was published by Press 53 in December, 2022. It contains eight essays that take a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, approach to the craft of fiction. They describe the various technical possibilities available to fiction writers and, further, they analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each possibility, the effects each choice we make has on the work as a whole. Although the essays are grounded in literary history and tradition, they frequently depart from the reigning dogma of our time, as expressed both in standard creative writing textbooks and in the practice of many contemporary fiction writers. (Note: The first edition of this book was published in hardcover in 2008 by Writer's Digest Books and reprinted in softcover as On Writing Fiction: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft in 2011. (A Chinese translation was published in 2017 by Bejing's Renmin University Press as part of their Creative Writing Book Series.) All seven of the original essays have been revised, updated, and expanded and an eighth essay has been added.
In the Foreword to the new edition, Bret Lott, the author of Jewel, Ancient Highway, Dead Low Tide, Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life, and numerous other books, says David Jauss is "a writer whose work I respect and admire utterly, and from whom I myself have learned a great deal about writing. ... You'll find in these pages, whether he is writing about such practical matters as point of view or such seemingly esoteric issues as Janusian thinking, a teacher who cares deeply about his students and a writer who cares just as deeply about the power of words and all they can mean." And he concludes: "The best way I know to discover how words do their work, and to understand how they can become art, is for the apprentice to study with a fierce and compassionate master of that art. David Jauss is just such a master, and this book grants its readers—you who desire to know what it means to write—an invaluable course of study..."
Here are some endorsements of my fiction:
"If I were in charge of the seating arrangements, I'd reserve a place for David Jauss in the very first row of contemporary American fiction writers. Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories is why. Each of the stories within delivers stunning revelations of deep human truths, and each hitches Jauss's formidable storytelling powers to his very good heart. I'm in awe of this collection." —WALLY LAMB, author of She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True
"These incredibly accomplished short stories are cause for celebration; whether the characters are male or female, young or old, from the majority or from the minority, David Jauss renders them with the compassionate mastery of a true and humble artist. His prose is at once lean and generous, sensual and intelligent, edgy without being judgmental. Glossolalia is an absolute triumph of the short form by a master of it, and you will not read a better collection anywhere." —ANDRE DUBUS III, author of House of Sand and Fog and Townie: A Memoir
"I have long been a great admirer of the work of David Jauss, though admirer is too weak a word. More like a fanatical fan. His stories have been personal landmarks for as long as I have been writing ('Glossolalia' is itself worth the price of admission), but with this new book [Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories] one can see the man and his work in all their literary glory. The new stories are stronger than ever, which is saying a lot, given the power of the early work, and the publication of this collection is an occasion for all readers to cheer." —BRET LOTT, author of Jewel and Dead Low Tide
"Written with clarity and compassion and an ability to see several sides of life simultaneously, Black Maps is a moving, impressive, deeply rewarding collection from a very talented writer." —LORRIE MOORE, author of Birds of America and I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
"For more than three decades David Jauss has been quietly crafting gems of literature. In Glossolalia he demonstrates yet again the skill, insight, and artistry that have earned him a place among the very best American writers. His talent runs deep." —CLINT MCCOWN, author of Haints and War Memorials
"I have long admired David Jauss's fiction—the tough, yet gentle intelligence in it. But having these stories together in this beautiful selection is such a pleasure. I've been going through the book slowly, savoring each story; each comprises what Peter Taylor called 'an evening's entertainment.' Yes indeed. An evening's superior entertainment." —RICHARD BAUSCH, author of The Stories of Richard Bausch and Peace
"David Jauss's work was a huge influence on me as a young writer, and I'm grateful that his smart, wise, deeply heartfelt stories are being collected in this beautiful new edition [Glossolalia]."—DAN CHAON, author of Among the Missing and Ill Will
"Nice People is among the best story collections I've ever read. My husband, who has not read it, asked if it were better than Chekhov and I hesitated. I hesitated!"--KELLY CHERRY, author of The Lost Traveller's Dream and Twelve Women in a Country Called America
"Black Maps is a near-perfect story collection." —PHILIP GRAHAM, author of How to Read an Unwritten Language and Interior Design: Stories
"What a fine collection David Jauss has written. ... The language of this book [Crimes of Passion] is clearly consecrated to its characters: they and their predicaments are more important to Jauss than is any need to show us how rich his gift is. It is very, very rich." —FREDERICK BUSCH, author of The Mutual Friend and The Stories of Frederick Busch
"Crimes of Passion is a remarkably varied performance, speaking to us at different times from 16th-century Spain and post-Vietnam America, in the voices of murderers, priests, and heart-broken lovers. The stories are executed with verve and wit, and one of them—'Shards'—is terrifying enough to have vexed my sleep for two nights running. A fine collection." —TOBIAS WOLFF, author of This Boy's Life and Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories