First published 2003
John Katzenbach faces a writer's peculiar challenge when approached to contribute to Reader's Digest's famous condensed book series. The established thriller author must grapple with editors who specialize in reducing full novels to their supposed essence. Katzenbach examines what happens when literature meets the machinery of compression. He watches his carefully crafted sentences get dissected and rebuilt. The process forces him to question which elements of storytelling truly matter. Characters he spent chapters developing get reduced to basic traits. Plot threads he wove together face surgical removal. The experience becomes a meditation on the nature of narrative itself. What survives when a story gets stripped to its bones? Katzenbach discovers that condensation reveals as much as it conceals about both writing and reading.
Genres: fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
540 pages · Hardcover · 2003)