The Tin House Writer’s Series: A Collection of Books Perfect for the Holiday
The Tin House Writer's Series
Just in time for the holidays, Tin House offers up a collection of four books perfect for the writer, critic, and/or editor in your household.
The set includes The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, a book I examined a month ago here and here. Again, I can't recommend it highly enough. Dorothy Allison's stunning essay (on) "Place" is worth the cost of the entire book (and the cost of this set, if anyone asks me).
Another included book already resides on my shelf: The Story About the Story, edited by J. C. Hallman. The Story About the Story proposes a new school of literary criticism but at the same time provides a toolkit indispensable to anyone who wants to write imaginatively. I'll be exploring these essays in the beginning of the new year. In the meantime, here's what the editors of The Quarterly Conversation had to say about The Story About the Story and the debate Hallman and the book spark about writing criticism:
Narcissus moments are few and far between, so when you do finally find one you must seize it. There you are, another tepid afternoon reading through the chaff of so many clueless critics—and then suddenly you see your twin bubbling in the current. This guy knows how to write about books! You feel that tinge of excitement. It is a beautiful moment. You are falling in love.
This roughly describes our collective experience when we read J.C. Hallman’s essay serialized in this issue. Quite plainly, we were taken aback by how precisely the author had laid out our own aspirations for criticism in this magazine. The piece, in our humble opinion, points toward an educated, unpretentious form of literary critique that serves both literature and the everyday reader. When people want to know what we’re looking for in this magazine, we’ll point them to Hallman’s essay and those he has collected in the book it prefaces.
The series also includes two other books I haven't yet had a chance to examine: The Journal of Jules Renard and The World Within. The former is the journal of a writer who influenced people like Somerset Maugham and Donald Barthelme, yet who remains less known in the United States. The latter is a collection of 20 Tin House interviews with writers about craft, the creative process, and the writer's life. Given my predilection for writer interviews, The World Within is certainly something I hope Santa slips in my stocking.
Santa? Are you listening?
The collection can be purchased directly from Tin House Books for $35.95.
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