A collection of essays, lectures, and observations on the art of
writing fiction from Alice McDermott, winner of the National Book Award
and unmatched virtuoso of language and image (Rebecca Steinitz, The
Boston Globe)**
What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction gathers the
bestselling novelist Alice McDermott's pithiest wisdom about her chosen
art, acquired over a lifetime as an acclaimed writer and teacher of
writing.
From technical advice ("check that your verbs aren't burdened by
unnecessary hads and woulds") to setting the bar ("I expect the fiction
I read to carry with it the conviction that it is written with no other
incentive than that it must be written"), from the demands of readers
("they'd been given a story with a baby in it, and they damn well wanted
that baby accounted for") to the foibles of public life ("I've never
subscribed to the notion that a film adaptation is the final imprimatur
for a work of fiction, despite how often I've been told by encouraging
friends and strangers, 'Maybe they'll make a movie of your novel, ' as
if I'd been aiming for a screenplay all along but somehow missed the
mark and wrote a novel by mistake"), McDermott muses trenchantly and
delightfully about the craft of fiction.
She also serves throughout as the artful conductor of a literary chorus,
quoting generously from the work of other great writers (including
Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nabokov, Morrison, and Woolf ), beautifully
joining her voice with theirs. These stories of lessons learned and
books read, and of the terrors and the joys of what she calls "this mad
pursuit," form a rich and valuable sourcebook for readers and writers
alike: a deeply charming meditation on the unique gift that is
literature.
