The Writer's Voice (Norton Lecture Series)

From Publishers Weekly
Based primarily on lectures given at the New York Public Library in October 2002, this slim, erudite guide is intended to help aspiring writers achieve an authentic voice and readers to recognize it. Veteran author Alvarez (The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, etc.) adopts the preachy tone of a learned sage discussing the rigors of style, the role of literary infatuation and the merits of literary emulation. In the first chapter, Alvarez cites Sylvia Plath as an example of a poet who found her authentic voice only in the last months of her life. He goes on to discuss how to avoid mannered rhetoric and cliché, and to outline the difference between writers who "carve" their work with extensive revision and those who "model" it (a distinction he borrows from Auden). The second chapter concerns the writer's (and reader's) ear and sense of rhythm, with examples from John Donne, Andrew Marvell and Shakespeare. The final chapter centers on how the reader places a writer in his or her historical context and on combating fads and trends in criticism. Here Alvarez rails against the anti-intellectualism of the beat generation, the rise of theory and the present day's "terror of elitism." Alas, Alvarez overcompensates, to the point where his own voice seems old-fashioned: full of truisms, predictable in its tastes and advice, and rather patronizing. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
How does a writer create his or her literary voice? How does an attentive reader hear that voice? What developments in modern culture often stifle that voice and stop up the reader's ears to its resonance? Alvarez ponders these questions as he probes, for instance, the imaginative magic through which Sylvia Plath discovered her powerfully disquieting voice in her final works. He then addresses these vexing perplexities from a different angle as he enacts the kind of careful reading that distinguishes between Marvell's polished but superficial verse translation of Seneca and Wyatt's rough but genuinely poetic translation. Too often, Alvarez complains, both writers and readers mistake mere style for voice. Worse, in a culture debauched by the resurgent Romantic Cult of the Artist, readers pay more attention to the writer's psychopathologies--often deliberately self-inflicted--than to his or her works. By probing enduring cultural issues in language mercifully free from jargon and shibboleths, Alvarez invites general readers into a serious critical dialogue too long monopolized by theoretically blinkered specialists. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Reflections on writing from a master. For a writer, voice is the problem that never lets you go. For a reader, voice is a profound mystery. What is it? How does it develop and why should it even matter? How does the reader hear and respond to an authentic voice, and what happens when the cult of personality threatens to subvert it? These are some of the slippery questions The Writer's Voice addresses with confidence and clarity. Aspiring young writers often confuse voice with stylishness, but the voice that matters has the whole weight of a life, however young, behind it. In this compelling book, renowned poet, author, and critic A. Alvarez defines "voice" as the vehicle by which a writer expresses his aliveness, hooks his readers, and keeps them listening. These powerful reflections from a lifetime's experience belong alongside John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, and William Zinsser's On Writing Well.


About the Author
A. Alvarez is a poet, novelist, literary critic, anthologist, and author of many highly praised books, including the New York Times bestseller The Savage God; The Biggest Game in Town; an autobiography, Where Did It All Go Right?; and New & Selected Poems. He lives in London.


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Alvarez (The Savage God: A Study of Suicide) has written a classic study of the authorial voice, of what "hooks" the reader on a given writer. Taking examples from a wide range of literature, from medieval to contemporary, Alvarez provides both an author's and a reader's view of voice and shares how he came to find his own. He investigates the connection between psychoanalytic "talking cures" and finding one's voice-leading him to compare the finding of voice with "the tricky business of becoming an adult"-and insists on the necessity of rewriting, of becoming obsessed with detail, and of listening to sounds and rhythms as if words were music. These sagacious words about finding authenticity in writing should benefit not only writers but also readers: the book is a gem. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/04.]-Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Univ., Farmville, VA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


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