The Art of Revision
The Last Word
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The fifteenth volume in the Art of series takes an expansive view of revision—on the page and in life
In The Art of Revision: The Last Word, Peter Ho Davies takes up an often discussed yet frequently misunderstood subject. He begins by addressing the invisibility of revision—even though it’s an essential part of the writing process, readers typically only see a final draft, leaving the practice shrouded in mystery. To combat this, Davies pulls examples from his novels The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes, as well as from the work of other writers, including Flannery O’Connor, Carmen Machado, and Raymond Carver, shedding light on this slippery subject.
Davies also looks beyond literature to work that has been adapted or rewritten, such as books made into films, stories rewritten by another author, and the practice of retconning in comics and film. In an affecting frame story, Davies recounts the story of a violent encounter in his youth, which he then retells over the years, culminating in a final telling at the funeral of his father. In this way, the book arrives at an exhilarating mode of thinking about revision—that it is the writer who must change, as well as the writing. The result is a book that is as useful as it is moving, one that asks writers to reflect upon themselves and their writing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Davies (A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself) draws on his experience teaching at the University of Michigan's writing program in this terrific guide to revising fiction. "Perhaps our ultimate resistance to revision, to doneness is that it prefigures death—the final draft, the last word," Davies writes. He rejects Thomas Wolfe's categorization of writers as either "putter-inners" or "taker-outers" and posits that revision is the process of finding out what one really means to do with a story and involves both cutting out "darlings" (or the "scaffolding... that can be taken down after the story is built") and by adding when more is needed. Along the way, Davies surveys the methods writers have used for revision, including those of Frank O'Connor and Isaac Babel, and the relationship between Raymond Carver and editor Gordon Lish—in each case, he shows why revisions were made and how they changed a story. Davies also devotes a chapter on knowing when one is done with a story—a moment, he says, "when you understand why you told your story in the first place, what your intent actually was." Full of spirit and sound advice, this survey will be a boon to writers.
