This is a gorgeous book, one that will inspire anyone to make the next
sentence.--Jericho Brown, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 2020
Roger Rosenblatt has always been "mad about the writing life." In this
new collection, he shares the stories and insights about writing that
have inspired him, as a journalist, a columnist for The Washington
Post, an essayist for Time magazine and The New Republic, and then
as the author of best-selling books like Making Toast, Rules for Aging,
Kayak Morning, and Unless It Moves the Human Heart. The new and
beloved pieces in
The Story I Am: Mad About the Writing Life, drawn from his vast body
of work, celebrate the art, the craft, and the soul of writing.
Here are essays and excerpts on the rewards and punishments of the life
of a writer, along with thoughts on how to write, what to write, and why
writing lies at the heart of human hope and experience. Reviewing
Rosenblatt's memoir The Boy Detective in the New York Times Book
Review, Pete Hamill said Rosenblatt "writes the way a great jazz
musician plays, moving from one emotion to another." For Rosenblatt,
writing, like jazz, is the art of improvisation. Rosenblatt writes that
"Writing makes justice desirable, evil intelligible, grief endurable,
and love possible." In a nutshell, it's worth a life.
