Every Day I Write the Book
Notes on Style
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- $32.99
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- $32.99
Publisher Description
Amitava Kumar’s Every Day I Write the Book is for academic writers what Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life and Stephen King’s On Writing are for creative writers. Alongside Kumar’s interviews with an array of scholars whose distinct writing offers inspiring examples for students and academics alike, the book’s pages are full of practical advice about everything from how to write criticism to making use of a kitchen timer. Communication, engagement, honesty: these are the aims and sources of good writing. Storytelling, attention to organization, solid work habits: these are its tools. Kumar’s own voice is present in his essays about the writing process and in his perceptive and witty observations on the academic world. A writing manual as well as a manifesto, Every Day I Write the Book will interest and guide aspiring writers everywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vassar English professor and novelist Kumar (Immigrant, Montana) addresses fellow scholars particularly those starting their careers in an inventive essay collection that speaks both to his "attraction to academic writing and rebellion against it." Presenting an argument, but not a how-to, for clearer and simpler scholarly writing, Kumar considers stylistic elements such as structure and voice, or practical problems such as getting published, without making one-size-fits-all proclamations. Celebrating those writers who "blurred the lines between the critical and the creative," particularly Susan Sontag a frequent reference point he shares relevant excerpts from interviews he's conducted with such writers as Viet Thanh Nguyen whose "ideal writing criticism as fiction and fiction as criticism," and Salman Rushdie, while also introducing less familiar writers as models to emulate, including Manthia Diawara (In Search of Africa) and Sarah Manguso (300 Arguments). The result is a celebration of "the value, the ease, and also the excitement of crafting writing that hasn't been produced to please a committee." Grad students and tenure seekers will appreciate the support Kumar's insightful and intellectually nimble book offers, even as they buckle down to the task at hand satisfying that committee of readers.
