Not for nothing, Edith was also an interior designer. This book showed how the work of the fiction writer is not only to create fiction but also to consume fiction and be able to hold forth on matters of craft. Balzac, Thackeray, George Eliot and Tolstoy should be read repeatedly. She holds the French and Russians in high esteem and the last chapter is dedicated to the charms of Proust. Wharton demonstrates a fluent understanding of both her contemporaries and her predecessors and she offers strong opinions-Jane Austen, impeccable, Thomas Hardy, not so much. In addition to the valuable advice, the book is so elegant and witty. I don’t know why it took me so long to read this book but it is required reading. She’s unafraid to offer opinions on how things should be done and her arguments are always compelling. Wharton offers opinions on writing education, genre fiction, literary realism, “magazine stories,” the short story, novels, the work of the critic, character versus plot, readability (hello, Winterson), structure, the nature of art, and so much more. I also realized many of the conversations we have about contemporary letters are the same conversations that were had when the book was published in 1924. I particularly appreciated her counsel on novels that are focused and character driven. I had no way of knowing but this book was exactly what I needed to remind me about what I should be doing with my writing. Wharton’s insights are sharp, timeless, and truly invaluable. I recently consoled myself with Age of Innocence and Wharton’s amazing short story, “Copy: A Dialogue.” Then I read Wharton’s The Writing of Fiction, a slim but rich volume of writing on writing. Sometimes, like many writers, I lose sight of that. The older I get, the more I realize that while you can and should grow and challenge yourself as a writer, you can only be who you are. It’s not hard to fall into the trap of losing confidence in what you do as a writer and/or trying to keep up with the literary Joneses by writing outside of your comfort zone to respond to the literary zeitgeiest. The Internet is great but it’s also terrible because you know, all the time, what everyone else is doing and it’s easy to lose sight of writing itself as what matters most. I’ve been thinking about Edith a great deal lately because I’ve been having a lot of self-doubt about my writing for a number of reasons, few of them rational, all of them frustrating. Her stories are timeless and elegant and if I had to be trapped somewhere with only one writer’s books for the rest of my life, I’d probably choose the complete works of Edith Wharton. Edith Wharton is one of my favorite writers.
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