Review of Peter Selgin’s Duplicity By Jack Smith, WTP Guest Writer Duplicity by Peter Selgin (South Orange, NJ: Serving House Books, December 4, 2020; 396 pages; $17.95; ISBN 978-1947175433). The text of this novel is a found object of six composition notebooks, containing, states one Emeritus Professor Gayton F. Sinclair, PhD, in his Afterword, autobiography mixed…
Category: on prose writing
Further Reflection on Metaphor
Metaphors as Affording us “Magnified Sight” and Related Considerations By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes In the previous craft note, we broached the question of how a metaphor might be given the proper space to breathe, the…
Reflecting on Metaphor
Giving a Metaphor Space to “Breathe” and Related Considerations By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes I saw her once Hop forty paces through the public street. And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,…
What Metaphor Can Do For Us
Part Two By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes Read Part 1, “What Can Metaphor Do For Us?“ ~ On what basis does Proust argue that “metaphor alone can give a sort of eternity to style”? Let’s…
What Can Metaphor Do for Us?
Part One By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes “I believe that metaphor alone can give a sort of eternity to style.” —Marcel Proust, Chroniques What can metaphor do for us? We should ask, in the same breath,…
Trying to Get It Right: The Aftermath of the Skirmish
The Craft of Fiction Writing By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Richard Wertime reflects on the Crafting of his story “Soccer,” published in WTP Vol. IX #3 “He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.” —William Blake, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion James Joyce once confided to a friend, while…
Strategic Clutter and Decoys
And Other Fictional Strategies By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Richard Wertime reflects on the Crafting of his story “Soccer,” published in WTP Vol. IX #3 “Setting in fiction ought always veer toward metonymy.” —Novelist Richard Bausch In my short story, “Soccer,” published in April’s WTP, a mid-life father joins his teen son, Kevin, in an…
Writing for the Long Haul
Creative Longevity as a Desire for the Unobtainable By Ronald J. Pelias, WTP Guest Writer With a wrinkled wave of years washing over me, I wonder why I am still trying to create, still trying to make words do what I would like them to do. You’d think that after all these years of effort…
Still Talking
The Abiding Voice of Toni Morrison By Lisa Zeiger, WTP Guest Writer “You hear the voice of the dead. They’re still talking and they want to be heard. And that, to me, is irresistibly interesting.” —Gore Vidal, on essays, from a BBC interview with Melvyn Bragg, c. 2008 Whenever I read an author I particularly…
Paul Bowles and Covid-19
On Paul Bowles: Living the End By WTP Guest Writer Lisa Zeiger “One of these days the future will be here, and you won’t be ready for it.” ― Paul Bowles, The Spider’s House I have wanted to write about Paul Bowles for a long time, and because he is a writer who explores endings,…
Character Development
Shoptalk: A Prose Central Series By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor I evolved shoptalk or notebook sheets during my teaching of fiction workshops, which proved helpful to me and to students. I asked them to ask themselves about character, plot, setting, dialogue, sensory imagery, sentimentality, translation, simultaneous actions and other aspects of craft. But foremost of…
On Aphorisms
From Richard Kostalanetz’s A Writer’s Torah A Selection by DeWitt Henry, WTP Prose Editor Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work in several fields appear in various editions of Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature,…