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Conway, Jill Ker

DeAndrea, William L.

In the Introduction to this reference volume DeAndrea writes, "I began this encyclopedia because I wanted to use it…This book is composed of entries for mystery writers, actors, characters, novels, films, and television and radio shows listed in an A-to-Z encyclopedia-style format." While this book will delight anyone interested in the mystery genre, it's most useful for those looking for film and television adaptations of mystery novels and characters.

The late DeAndrea, himself the Edgar-winning author of several mysteries, explains the appeal of the mystery story in this way:

The crime, you see, is just to set the stakes. The real message of the detective story is that even in the worst of circumstances, a man or woman can make things right using courage, tenacity, and brainpower. Even though writers depict protagonists who are corrupt or criminal, the characters are at least trying to do something about their lives.…In a world that seems to operate more or less at random, it's nice to be able to enter a world where justice is always striven for and usually attained.

(ix)

Hawthorn, Jeremy

This slim volume is a good choice for book-discussion group members who appreciate good books but want to sharpen their reading and discussion skills. The premise of Hawthorn's book is that "in the course of studying novels we must learn to pay more overt attention to their language than does the average casual reader" (3).

Hawthorn devotes chapters to such broad topics as the history of the novel, critical approaches to fiction, and the cultural trends of realism, modernism, and postmodernism. But he is at his best in the chapters entitled "Analysing Fiction" and "Studying the Novel," which make up the bulk of the book. He provides a checklist of elements a reader should make note of while reading a novel as well as extensive suggestions for preparing for written examinations. These chapters give readers the insight to read critically and the vocabulary to discuss what they read.

When presenting his general supporting material Hawthorn often apologizes for reducing a huge topic to its barest essentials. The apologies suggest that summary discussion goes against his professorial grain of wanting to expound on each topic fully; yet the summary approach is necessary to keep the material manageable and is what makes this guide appropriate for general readers as well as students.

Heising, Willetta L.

This book is available in two versions: a small one, about the size of a checkbook, and the large, more complete version. The small version lists only authors, titles, and years of publication and is handy for carrying to bookstores to keep track of books purchased. The larger version contains much more information, including a brief description of each author and a listing of her books by series character, and lists of pseudonyms, mystery types, series characters, settings, and time periods.

Heising, Willetta L.

A companion volume to Detecting Women 2 (see above), also available in small and large versions.

Jacobsohn, Rachel W.

In this book the reading group guru Rachel Jacobsohn deals with all the nuts-and-bolts aspects of forming a reading grouShe covers everything from what a book group is and does to whether to have food at meetings. The book also includes an appendix of reading lists with titles such as "50 Novels to Help Raise Your Moral Consciousness," "On Politics and Politicians," and "Mysteries in Historical Settings."

McDonnell, Jane Taylor

Jane Taylor McDonnell is the mother of an autistic child. When she set out to write a memoir about her experience, she found there were no instruction manuals on how to write what she calls "crisis memoirs." Living to Tell the Tale: A Guide to Writing Memoir is aimed at survivors interested in writing their own crisis memoirs:

Writing is a second chance at life. Although we can never go back in time to change the past, we can reexperience, interpret, and make peace with our past lives. When we write a personal narrative we find new meanings and, at the same time, we discover connections with our former selves. I think all writing constitutes an effort to establish our own meaningfulness, even in the midst of sadness and disappointment. In fact, writing sometimes seems to me to be the only way to give shape to life, to complete the process which is merely begun by living.

(1)

 A flexible form of writing, memoir can combine the techniques of fiction with essay writing, the personal with the public dimensions of an experience, and the documentary account with poetic and evocative recreations of experience. A dramatic story can be told, but there is also room for reflection on memory and the imagination and on the creation of a sense of self in the world.

(14)

Each chapter ends with writing exercises aimed at helping the reader develop the skills or explore the area that the chapter discusses. At the end of the book a section entitled "Recommended Reading" lists the titles of books (mostly personal narratives) that McDonnell has found helpful.

Morris, Evan

The revised edition of Morris's book has just been released. The original version contains useful sections on topics such as how to find and subscribe to mailing lists, how to locate and participate in Usenet (newsgroup) discussions, and how to put your own writing on the Internet. Probably most useful to net-savvy readers, however, is the chapter entitled "On-Line Resources for Book Lovers."

This book offers extensive lists of online resources for research in all major subject areas, including English and the arts.
 

Rosenblatt, Louise M.

Rosenblatt is one of the proponents of the reader-response theory of literary criticism, a concept that emerged in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s as a reaction to New Criticism, which treated a literary work as an object that should be considered without reference to the reader’s experience of it. Reader-response criticism emphasizes the reader’s reaction while reading a literary work in what Rosenblatt in the preface of this book calls “the reader’s contribution in the two-way, ‘transactional’ relationship with the text” (ix). In reaction to the New Critics, Rosenblatt tells us, “I rejected the notion of the poem-as-object, and the neglect of both author and reader” (xii).

In Chapter 1: The Invisible Reader, Rosenblatt says that toward the end of the eighteenth century, the author emerged as a dominant entity in a work of literature. “Even those who seemed to continue the concern for reality admitted ultimately the preeminence of the author […]. Thus the reader was left to play the role of invisible eavesdropper” (2). Further, the “twentieth-century reaction against the obsession with the poet and his emotions” brought “even more unrelenting invisibility” to the reader (3).

Chapter 2: The Poem as Event rejects New Criticism’s contention that a literary work exists on its own, independent of either its author or the reader:

The poem […] must be thought of as an event in time. It is not an object or an ideal entity. It happens during a coming-together, a compenetration, of a reader and a text. The reader brings to the text his past experience and present personality. Under the magnetism of the ordered symbols of the text, he marshals his resources and crystallizes out from the stuff of memory, thought, and feeling a new order, a new experience, which he sees as the poem. This becomes part of the ongoing stream of his life experience, to be reflected on from any angle important to him as a human being (12).

Chapter 3: Efferent and Aesthetic Reading sets out to define the difference between reading a work of literature and reading another kind of written communication such as a newspaper article or scientific treatise “by showing how the event that produces the reading of a poem differs from other reading-events” (23). Rosenblatt defines the type of reading in which the main purpose is to take away information (e.g., reading a newspaper article, a recipe, a history book) as “efferent” (24). “In aesthetic reading, in contrast, the reader’s primary concern is with what happens during the actual reading event” (24). She acknowledges that sometimes “the same text may be read either efferently or aesthetically” (25). In explaining her theory of the reader’s experience, Rosenblatt refers to Coleridge’s famous statement about poetry: “The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself” (28; Rosenblatt’s italics).

In Chapter 4: Evoking a Poem Rosenblatt explains that the experience of evoking the poem goes on as the reader gets further into the poem. (Rosenblatt is here using the term poem generally to refer to any artistic work of literature.) The reader, she continues, “is immersed in a creative process that goes on largely below the threshold of awareness” (52). This process “imposes the delicate task of sorting the relevant from the irrelevant in a continuing process of selection, revision, and expansion” (53):

As one decodes the opening lines or sentences and pages of a text, one begins to develop a tentative sense of a framework within which to place what will follow. Underlying this is the assumption that this body of words, set forth in certain patterns and sequences on the page, bears the potentiality for a reasonably unified or integrated, or at the very least coherent, experience. One evolves certain expectations about the diction, the subject, the ideas, the themes, the  kind of text, that will be forthcoming. Each sentence, each phrase, each word, will signal certain possibilities and exclude others, thus limiting the arc of expectations. What the reader has elicited from the text up to any point generates a receptivity to certain kinds of ideas, overtones, or attitudes. Perhaps one can think of this as an alerting of certain areas of memory, a stirring-up of certain reservoirs of experience, knowledge, and feeling. As the reading proceeds, attention will be fixed on the reverberations of implications that result from fulfillment or frustration of those expectations (54).

interest seems to be the name given to the reader’s need to live through to some resolution of the tensions, questions, curiosity or conflicts aroused by the text. This need to resolve, to round out, gives impetus to the organizing activity of the reader. What we call a sense of form also manifests itself in such progression, the arousal of expectations, the movement toward some culmination or completion (54-55).

One potential objection to the reader-response theory of literary criticism is that it suggests that anyone’s reading of a work is just as valid as any other reading, since the whole point is for a particular person to react to the work. But Rosenblatt explains that some readings are more informed than others and that people can become better readers through practice and experience:

Past literary experiences serve as subliminal guides as to the genre to be anticipated, the details to be attended to, the kinds of organizing patterns to be evolved […]. Traditional subjects, themes, treatments, may provide the guides to organization and the background against which to recognize something new or original in the text […]. Awareness—more or less explicit—of repetitions, echoes, resonances, repercussions, linkages, cumulative effects, contrasts, or surprises is the mnemonic matrix for the structuring of emotion, idea, situation, character, plot—in short, for the evocation of a work of art (57-58).

Rosenblatt further addresses this potential objection to reader-response criticism in Chapter 5: The Text: Openness and Constraint. Here she is concerned with “the wide range of referential and affective responses that might be activated, and the fact that the reader must manage these responses, must select from them” (75). Remembering that the reading process is a “two-way, ‘transactional’ relationship,” she insists that a reader’s response to the text must be grounded in the text itself:  “when we turn from the broader environment of the reading act to the text itself, we need to recognize that a very important aspect of a text is the cues it provides as to what stance the reader should adopt” (81).

The importance of the text is not denied by recognition of its openness. The text is the author’s means of directing the attention of the reader […]. The reader, concentrating his attention on the world he [the author] has evoked, feels himself freed for the time from his own preoccupations and limitations. Aware that the blueprint of this experience is the author’s text, the reader feels himself in communication with another mind, another world (86).

Rosenblatt continues this argument in Chapter 6: The Quest for “The Poem Itself,” where she emphasizes that she does not “claim that anything any reader makes of the text is acceptable. Two prime criteria of validity as I understand it are the reader’s interpretation not be contradicted by any element of the text, and that nothing be projected for which there is no verbal basis” (115). The New Critics, she argues, sought

to rescue the poem as a work of art from earlier confusions with the poem either as a biographical document or as a document in intellectual and social history. A mark of twentieth-century criticism thus became depreciation of such approaches to literature and development of the technique of “close reading” of the work as an autonomous entity […]. The reaction against romantic impressionism fostered the ideal of an impersonal or objective criticism. Impressionist critics were charged with forgetting “the poem itself” as they pursued the adventures of their souls among masterpieces (102).

Recent critical and literary theory is replete with references to “the informed reader,” “the competent reader,” “the ideal reader.” All suggest a certain distinction from, if not downright condescension toward, the ordinary reader. This reflects the elitist view of literature and criticism that in recent decades has tended to dominate academic and literary circles (138).

Let us look at the reality of the literary enterprise, of “literature” as a certain kind of activity of human beings in our culture. Instead of a contrast or break between the ordinary reader and the knowledgeable critic, we need to stress the basic affinity of all readers of literary works of art. The general reader needs to honor his own relationship with the text (140).

The literary critic is, after all, just another reader:

Like other readers, critics may reveal the text’s potentialities for responses different—perhaps more sensitive and more complex—from our own. The critic may have developed a fuller and more articulate awareness of the literary, ethical, social, or philosophic concepts that he brings to the literary transaction, and may thus provide us with a basis for uncovering the assumptions underlying our own responses. In this way, critics may function not as stultifying models to be echoed but as teachers, stimulating us to grow in our own capacities to participate creatively and self-critically in literary transactions. […] we must at least hope for an increasingly independent body of readers, who take the critic not as model but as a fellow reader, with whom to agree or disagree, or whose angle of vision may in some instances seem remote from their own (148-149).

The concept of transactional analysis of literature has profound implications for the educational system, Rosenblatt says:

a primary concern throughout would be the development of the individual’s capacity to adopt and to maintain the aesthetic stance, to live fully and personally in the literary transaction. From this could flow growth in all the kinds of resources needed for transactions with increasingly demanding and increasingly rewarding texts. And from this would flow, also, a humanistic concern for the relation of the individual literary event to the continuing life of the reader in all its facets—aesthetic, moral, economic, or social (161).

Perhaps we should consider the text as an even more general medium of communication among readers. As we exchange experiences, we point to those elements of the text that best illustrate or support our interpretations. We may help one another to attend to words, phrases, images, scenes, that we have overlooked or slighted. We may be led to reread the text and revise our own interpretation. Sometimes we may be strengthened in our own sense of having “done justice to” the text, without denying its potentialities for other interpretations. Sometimes the give-and-take may lead to a general increase in insight and even to a consensus (146).

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Rubel, David (ed.)

This book's further subtitle is "A Critical Guide to the Complete Works of 110 Authors." In the "Introduction" Rubel explains the criteria used to decide what authors would be included: "Each person had to be living and currently writing, the author of more than one book, and not associated with a particular genre"; the list was further narrowed down by "taking into account the critical reception that each author had received, including prizes that the author had won" (7).

The emphasis is on literary fiction. You won't find Sandra Brown, Robin Cook, John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, or Danielle Steel included here, but you will find Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Philip Roth, and John Updike. The entry for each author includes a complete list of the writer's fictional works, with the major works starred; a brief biography; and a sampling of critical commentary from major sources.

Book groups looking to beef up their reading lists will find ample material here, as will individuals interested in finding new authors to explore or wondering which work of a particular author to read first.

Sturrock, John (ed.)

In 28 chapters, this guide covers literary developments since about 1960 around the world. Organized by country or, sometimes, by region (e.g., African countries, Arab countries), the chapters cover both the area’s individual literary scene and its place in world literary development. Each chapter, written by an expert in the field, is, according to editor Sturrock, “succinct but thorough, naming the names that were thought most important and picking out the stylistic and ideological trends that have marked the literature in question over the past three decades” (vii).

Note that the title refers to “contemporary writing,” not “contemporary literature.” “There is more to a literature than simply poetry and fiction,” Sturrock says in his editor’s introduction, “and the contributors to this Guide were invited to look beyond those privileged genres when deciding what to include, to take in writing for the theatre, say, or autobiography, or essays, or criticism, where it seemed of a high enough quality locally to merit attention. In the main, however, it is novelists and poets who dominate these pages” (vii).

The scope of the work—dealing with a country’s literature over the past 30 years in just a few pages—can lead to some odd juxtapositions (such as, in the United States chapter, discussion of Tom Wolfe and Scott Turow in the same paragraph). Nonetheless, this is a handy reference for anyone looking to become acquainted with a new body of literature, to compare one country’s literature with another’s, or to place a particular national literature in the larger, world context.

Swanson, Jean and Dean James

This book contains capsule descriptions of works by more than 200 contemporary female mystery writers. A particularly useful feature here is the "If you like this author's works, you might also enjoy…" recommendations at the end of each description. Also useful are the indexes arranged by series character, by geography, and by type of detective.

Zinsser, William (ed.)

This book originated as a series of talks sponsored by the Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc., and presented at The New York Public Library in the winter of 1986. The book contains a memoir and introduction by William Zinsser, along with sections by Russell Baker, Annie Dillard, Alfred Kazin, Toni Morrison, and Lewis Thomas.

In his introductory section, "Writing and Remembering," Zinsser says that for this series of talks

"Memoir" was defined as some portion of a life. Unlike autobiography, which moves in a dutiful line from birth to fame, omitting nothing significant, memoir assumes the life and ignores most of it. The writer of a memoir takes us back to a corner of his or her life that was unusually vivid or intense—childhood, for instance—or that was framed by unique events. By narrowing the lens, the writer achieves a focus that isn't possible in autobiography; memoir is a window into a life.

(21)

• "…a good memoir is also a work of history, catching a distinctive moment in the life of both a person and a society" (22).
• "Ego is at the heart of all the reasons why anybody writes a memoir, whether it's a book or a pamphlet or a letter to our children. Memoir is how we validate our lives" (24).
• "One central point emerged: the writer of a memoir must become the editor of his own life. He must cut and prune an unwieldy story and give it a narrative shape. His duty is to the reader, not himself" (24).

Annie Dillard also emphasizes the notion of memoir as an account crafted to express an idea, part of a genre she calls literary nonfiction: "…nonfiction accounts may be literary insofar as the parts of their structures cohere internally, insofar as the things are in them for the sake of the work itself, and insofar as the work itself exists in the service of idea" (73).

Also see: Conway, Jill Ker. When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (1998).

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