by Paul West
First published 2007
Paul West opens this final collection of literary essays with tributes to novelist John Hawkes and astronomer Carl Sagan, then tackles a peculiar situation. Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee has transformed West himself into a character in the novel Elizabeth Costello. West dissects this odd literary maneuver alongside fifteen other essays that explore the tension between straightforward storytelling and the compulsive need to capture what the mind cannot ignore. He travels from an epic poem about the Titanic to his encounters with Borges and Samuel Beckett. West examines Faulkner's complexities, considers where the novel is heading, and analyzes works by William Gass and Bradford Morrow. He reveals his own writing methods and the origins of several books. The collection includes a comprehensive index covering all four Sheer Fiction volumes published across eighteen years.
Genres: essays, literary-criticism, literary-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, criticism, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: meta-fiction
Period: 20th-Century, 21st-Century
232 pages · Hardcover · McPherson & Company