"How lovely to discover a book on the craft of writing that is also
fun to read . . . Alison asserts that the best stories follow patterns
in nature, and by defining these new styles she offers writers the
freedom to explore but with enough guidance to thrive." ―Maris Kreizman,
Vulture
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 A Poets & Writers Best Books
for Writers
As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and
appealing book about the craft of writing: "For centuries there's been
one path through fiction we're most likely to travel― one we're actually
told to follow―and that's the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows
tense, reaches a peak, subsides . . . But something that swells and
tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculosexual, no? So many
other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life.
Why not draw on them, too?"
W. G. Sebald's Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how
forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the
traditional arc--or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose
considered in her "museum of specimens" include Nicholson Baker, Anne
Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid,
Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary
Robison.
Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of
literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its
original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let's
leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring
feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and
writers alike.
