Meander, Spiral, Explode : Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison

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SKU: 9781948226134 Category:

“Alison’s close readings can be exhilarating. One of her more seductive ideas is the notion of possible ‘correlations between kinds of stories and certain patterns,’ as when reflective first-person novels adopt the spiral . . . Alison’s prose is potent and lush, her enthusiasm infectious . . . The fecundity of Alison’s writing is of a piece with her larger mission: to turn narrative theory into a supersaturated mindfuck of hedonistic extravaganza. It is a special kind of literary criticism.” —Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

“Doctors don’t imitate Galen. Why should writers follow Aristotle? Jane Alison in her fresh, original book about narrative is our new Aristotle.” —Edmund White, author of The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading

“[A] boundlessly inventive look at narrative form . . . filled with clarity and wit, underlain with formidable erudition.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 On Sale April 2, 2019 • ISBN 9781948226134

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 It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let’s leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation.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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

JANE ALISON is the author of a memoir, The Sisters Antipodes, and four novels—The Love-ArtistThe Marriage of the SeaNatives and Exotics, and Nine Island—and is also the translator of Ovid’s stories of sexual transformation, Change Me. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville. Find out more at www.janealisonauthor.com.

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