I did my dissertation on Kafka.
If you want to study writing, read Dickens
The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.
I think I made a mistake with [Jane] Austen by reading all six in a row. There are similarities to the plots so by the time I got to the last one I could anticipate what was happening too easily. But her characterizations are amazing.
If you're, like, a PhD student in English, and you look at each instance that Richard Yates is mentioned in the book...it has sort of it's own narrative that one could analyze and write literary criticism about.
I learned to write crime novels by reading people I hoped to emulate: people like James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, Joseph Wambaugh, and Sue Grafton.
I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.
How far we are going to read a poet when we can read about a poet is a problem to lay before biographers.
Linda Svendsen's 'Marine Life' was important. I was nearly 22. Larry Mathews discussed the book in a creative writing class. We examined her stories, figured out how they worked.
Like many writers, I'm usually more interested in reading about authors than their actual works. We're more curious to know how they were written than what they are like to read.
The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.
If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.
By reading a lot of novels in a variety of genres, and asking questions, it's possible to learn how things are done - the mechanics of writing, so to speak - and which genres and authors excel in various areas.
He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer.
In "Faithful," Ray Bradbury is discussed a lot. The characters read "The Illustrated Man."
