Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life (2018)by Richard Russo
Books Read in 2018 (2,886) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Richard Russo, among my favorite authors, proves to be no less entertaining in his essays than in his novels. His “The Destiny Thief” (2018) should interest other hardcore Russo fans, as well as anyone else intrigued by how writers write. In the title essay, Russo recalls being in a fiction workshop at the University of Arizona as a young man. His instructor told him he would never make it as a novelist and should stick with a career in teaching. A classmate, meanwhile, was hailed as a future star in the literary world. Instead that classmate never rose out of obscurity, while Russo won a Pulitzer for Empire Falls. He, probably like the other man, feels as if he somehow stole the other's destiny. Russo's way of mixing the comic with the serious helps explain why his novels are so endearing to many, and he explains his attitude toward humor in "The Gravestone and the Commode." At one time, he writes, he had one of each in his backyard. "The best humor has always resided in the chamber next to the one occupied by suffering," he writes. "There's a door adjoining these rooms that's never completely closed." Two essays focus on other writers. In one he writes about the difficulty of separating Mark Twain's fiction from his nonfiction because Twain put so much truth in his stories and so much invention in his supposedly true accounts. In another he describes “The Pickwick Papers” by Charles Dickens as "a jailbreak of the writer's imagination." It was during the writing of this book that Dickens let himself go to become the kind of writer he was destined to be. Russo discusses in several of these essays the influence of his usually absent father on his life and on his fiction. His father was the model for perhaps his best-loved character, Sully in “Nobody's Fool” and “Everybody's Fool,” as well as for other characters in other books. Good writing has at least as much to do with hard work over a long period of time as natural talent, the author tells us. His father was a union man. Union members pay their dues. no reviews | add a review
Biography & Autobiography.
Literary Criticism.
Nonfiction.
HTML:A master of the novel, short story, and memoir, the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Everybody's Fool now gives us his very first collection of personal essays, ranging throughout writing and reading and living. In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo's writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers. No library descriptions found.
|
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)814.54Literature English (North America) American essays 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
The essays often wander off track, never returning to the original point presented initially in the essay. Some are more of a stream of consciousness rambling. He often goes on a rant against ebooks, Amazon, and chain booksellers such as Barnes and Noble and Borders (back in the day when they existed).
His life advice is terrible, to put it mildly. He believes having a good job, making good money (as he does), making your parents proud, or discovering your aptitude in life (as he has done) are terrible things to achieve. He also suggests people should have many children, even if they cannot afford to properly feed and clothe them, or if they possess poor parenting skills. That is exactly what we need, child abusers having children and people having children who are neither financially capable nor emotionally equipped to care for them. What is wrong with this guy?
I am sorry I wasted the few hours it took to read this book. My time could have been better spent reading a decent book. ( )