The art of X-ray reading : how the secrets of 25 great works of literature will improve your writing Cover Image

Book

The art of X-ray reading : how the secrets of 25 great works of literature will improve your writing / Roy Peter Clark.

Summary:

In this practical and engaging guide, Roy Peter Clark teaches the fine art of X-ray reading. When we X-ray read, we look beneath the surface of a text to discover the strategies that create the effects we experience--such as suspense, humor, or pain ; we can then adopt these strategies as our own.

Record details

ISBN: 9780316282178
ISBN: 0316282170
Physical Description: viii, 326 pages ; 22 cm.
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2016.
Copyright: ©2016

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-316) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction: Where writers learn their best moves -- X-raying Gatsby : power of the parts -- X-raying Lolita : words at play -- X-raying Hemingway and Didion : words left out -- X-raying James Joyce : language as sacrament -- X-raying Sylvia Plath : jolt of insight -- X-raying Flannery O'Connor : dragon's teeth -- X-raying "The lottery" : piling stones -- X-raying Madame Bovary : signs of inner life -- X-raying Miss Lonelyhearts and A visit from the Goon Squad : texts within texts -- X-raying King Lear and The grapes of wrath : tests of character -- X-raying Gabriel García Márquez : making it strange -- X-raying Homer, Virgil, Roth- and Hitchcock : zooming in -- X-raying Chaucer : pointing the way -- X-raying Sir Gawain and the Green Knight : careless wish -- X-raying Macbeth : ends of things -- X-raying Shakespeare's sonnets : shaking the form -- X-raying Moby-Dick : three little words -- X-raying W.B. Yeats : sacred center -- X-raying Zora Neale Hurston : words on fire -- X-raying Harper Lee : weight of the wait -- X-raying M.F.K. Fisher : cooking a story -- X-raying Hiroshima : stopped clock -- X-raying Rachel Carson and Laura Hillenbrand : sea inside us -- X-raying Toni Morrison : repetitious variation -- X-raying Charles Dickens and Donna Tartt : echo of text -- Great sentences from famous authors : an exercise in X-ray reading -- Twelve steps to get started as an X-ray reader.