More to Say
Essays and Appreciations
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- ¥1,100
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- ¥1,100
発行者による作品情報
“Earnest, amusing, and contemplative....though Beattie is known for her fiction, her nonfiction has just as much to offer.”—Publishers Weekly
“Shimmering prose and critical acumen on display in an eclectic collection.”—Kirkus Reviews
As deeply rewarding as her fiction, a selection of Ann Beattie’s essays, chosen and introduced by the author. From appreciations of writers, photographers, and other artists, to notes on the craft of writing itself, this is a wide-ranging, and always penetrating collection of writing never before published in book form.
Ann Beattie, a master storyteller, has been delighting readers since the publication of her short stories in the 1970s and her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter. But as her literary acclaim grew and she was hailed “the voice of her generation,” Ms. Beattie was also moonlighting as a nonfiction writer. As she writes in her introduction to this collection, “Nonfiction always gave me a thrill, even if it provided only an illusion of freedom. Freedom and flexibility—for me, those are the conditions under which imagination sparks.”
These penetrating essays are stories unto themselves, closely observed appreciations of life and art. The reader travels with Ms. Beattie to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to learn about the legacy of the painter, Grant Wood, and his iconic painting American Gothic; to the famed University of Virginia campus with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry; to Key West, Florida for New Years with writer and translator, Harry Mathews; to a roadside near Boston in a broken-down car with the wheelchair-bound writer Andre Dubus.
There are explorations of novels, short stories, paintings, and photographs by artists ranging from Alice Munro to Elmore Leonard, from Sally Mann to John Loengard. Whatever the subject, Ms. Beattie brings penetrating insight into literature and art that’s both familiar and unfamiliar—as she writes, “This, I think, is what artists want to do: find a way to lure the reader or viewer into an alternate realm, to overcome the audience’s resistance to being taken away from their own lives and interests and priorities.”
Ann Beattie’s nonfiction (originally published in Life, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The American Scholar, among others) is a new way to enjoy one of the great writers of her generation. Readers will find much to love in this journey with a curious and fascinating mind.
More to Say is part of Godine’s Nonpareil series: celebrating the joy of discovery with books bound to be classics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beattie (A Wonderful Stroke of Luck) collects heartfelt reflections on literary and visual arts in this thoughtful outing. She lovingly contemplates the work of such artists and writers as Andre Dubus, Sally Mann, Trisha Orr, and John Updike, unpacking, for instance, how Elizabeth Spencer uses "quibbles and qualifications" to sow doubt in her short story "The Runaways" and how photographer Holly Wright links "the amusing and the beautiful" in her images of piggy banks, blood blots, and baby rattles. Beattie's tone brings together candor and comedy, as when she compares her writing process to painter Lincoln Perry's and remarks that painting and writing "are not at all alike, and the day I have to maneuver the pages of a novel out my office window, I'll play the analogy game." In lyrical prose, Beattie considers the limits of literary criticism, such as when she touts Alice Munro's penchant for making "the ordinary magical" in her collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and posits that "Munro has a Houdini-like ability to snare you in your own net of description, while the fullness of her story slips away and makes its miraculous escape." Earnest, amusing, and contemplative, this suggests that though Beattie is known for her fiction, her nonfiction has just as much to offer.
