The Art of X-Ray Reading

One of America's most influential writing teachers offers writing lessons we can draw from twenty-five great texts.

Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made.

In The Art of X-Ray Reading, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye, and many more. Along the way, he shows you how to mine these masterpieces for invaluable writing strategies that you can add to your arsenal and apply in your own writing. Once you've experienced X-ray reading, your writing will never be the same again.

"[Clark] opens The Art of X-Ray Reading with the suggestion that good writers, like a certain superhero of yore, are possessed of a kind of sixth-sense ability. . . . Every page of his book brings new insight into the fact that every good book is. . .the product of conscious choice, goodwill, and energy. It's a pleasure to read, and a pleasure to learn from." —Tampa Bay Times

"Clark's understanding of the linkage between writing and literacy, and his ability to teach across generations, is in short supply. He is a national treasure that needs to be mined aggressively." —USA Today