Good Prose
Download Good Prose full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online free Good Prose ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Author | : Tracy Kidder |
Publisher | : Random House |
Total Pages | : 225 |
Release | : 2013-01-15 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 0679604723 |
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS Good Prose is an inspiring book about writing—about the creation of good prose—and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship. The story begins in 1973, in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him. From that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a heady moment, but for Kidder and Todd it was only the beginning of an education in the art of nonfiction. Good Prose explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs. Kidder and Todd draw candidly, sometimes comically, on their own experience—their mistakes as well as accomplishments—to demonstrate the pragmatic ways in which creative problems get solved. They also turn to the works of a wide range of writers, novelists as well as nonfiction writers, for models and instruction. They talk about narrative strategies (and about how to find a story, sometimes in surprising places), about the ethical challenges of nonfiction, and about the realities of making a living as a writer. They offer some tart and emphatic opinions on the current state of language. And they take a clear stand against playing loose with the facts. Their advice is always grounded in the practical world of writing and publishing. Good Prose—like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style—is a succinct, authoritative, and entertaining arbiter of standards in contemporary writing, offering guidance for the professional writer and the beginner alike. This wise and useful book is the perfect companion for anyone who loves to read good books and longs to write one. Praise for Good Prose “Smart, lucid, and entertaining.”—The Boston Globe “You are in such good company—congenial, ironic, a bit old-school—that you’re happy to follow [Kidder and Todd] where they lead you.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] well-structured, to-the-point, genuinely useful, and fun-to-read guide to writing narrative nonfiction, essays, and memoir . . . Crisp, informative, and mind-expanding.”—Booklist “A gem . . . The finer points of creative nonfiction are molded into an inspiring read that will affect the would-be writer as much as Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird or Stephen King’s On Writing. . . . This is a must read for nonfiction writers.”—Library Journal “As approachable and applicable as any writing manual available.”—Associated Press
Author | : David Josiah Brewer |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 466 |
Release | : 1900 |
Genre | : English essays |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Lorettus Sutton Metcalf |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 804 |
Release | : 1901 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : |
Current political, social, scientific, education, and literary news written about by many famous authors and reform movements.
Author | : |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 872 |
Release | : 1915 |
Genre | : Periodicals |
ISBN | : |
Author | : |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 818 |
Release | : 1928 |
Genre | : Great Britain |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Walter Scott |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 416 |
Release | : 1834 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
Author | : |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 908 |
Release | : 1901 |
Genre | : Arts |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Thomas Stewart Omond |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 360 |
Release | : 1921 |
Genre | : Criticism |
ISBN | : |
Author | : James Silk Buckingham |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 900 |
Release | : 1880 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Francis-Noël Thomas |
Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 234 |
Release | : 2017-03-14 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 1400887356 |
Everyone talks about style, but no one explains it. The authors of this book do; and in doing so, they provoke the reader to consider style, not as an elegant accessory of effective prose, but as its very heart. At a time when writing skills have virtually disappeared, what can be done? If only people learned the principles of verbal correctness, the essential rules, wouldn't good prose simply fall into place? Thomas and Turner say no. Attending to rules of grammar, sense, and sentence structure will no more lead to effective prose than knowing the mechanics of a golf swing will lead to a hole-in-one. Furthermore, ten-step programs to better writing exacerbate the problem by failing to recognize, as Thomas and Turner point out, that there are many styles with different standards. In the first half of Clear and Simple, the authors introduce a range of styles--reflexive, practical, plain, contemplative, romantic, prophetic, and others--contrasting them to classic style. Its principles are simple: The writer adopts the pose that the motive is truth, the purpose is presentation, the reader is an intellectual equal, and the occasion is informal. Classic style is at home in everything from business memos to personal letters, from magazine articles to university writing. The second half of the book is a tour of examples--the exquisite and the execrable--showing what has worked and what hasn't. Classic prose is found everywhere: from Thomas Jefferson to Junichirō Tanizaki, from Mark Twain to the observations of an undergraduate. Here are many fine performances in classic style, each clear and simple as the truth. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.