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Shop nowMeander, Spiral, Explode
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Learn more“Doctors don’t imitate Galen. Why should writers follow Aristotle? Jane Alison in her fresh, original book about narrative is our new Aristotle.” ―Edmund White, author of The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: “For centuries there’s been one path through fiction we’re most likely to travel―one we’re actually told to follow―and that’s the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides…But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?”
W. G. Sebald’s Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc―or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her “museum of specimens” include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison.
Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let’s leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike.
Jane Alison is the author of a memoir, The Sisters Antipodes, and four novels―The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, Natives and Exotics, and Nine Island―and is also the translator of Ovid’s stories of sexual transformation, Change Me. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville. Find out more at www.JaneAlisonAuthor.com.
Bernadette Dunne is the winner of more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.
Reviews
“Alison’s book is like a cold shower to ward off the standard narrative arc and rewire our mental circuitry to see the patterns of nature in the structure of novels.”
“The best work of literary criticism I’ve read so far this year.”
“Who knew literary criticism could be so much fun?”
“Her fascinating new book…looks at the ways in which…writing can shine when not on a typical linear path, when it is allowed instead to spiral and spring forward and back, fold in on itself or unravel in infinite directions, all of which feel new and exciting.”
“In her boundlessly inventive look at narrative form…Alison would have readers conceive of other dramatic shapes…including waves in Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus; meandering paths, like rivers or snail trails, that allow the reader to ‘wander a bit, look about, pause’…It would do a disservice to this work to pigeonhole it as ‘literary criticism;' the study is filled with clarity and wit, underlain with formidable erudition.”
“Her observations of the sensory aspects of literature are indulgent and delectable and sure to elevate the experience of readers and writers alike.”
“For readers interested in literary theory, Alison does a great job making it palatable.”
“Doctors don’t imitate Galen. Why should writers follow Aristotle? Jane Alison in her fresh, original book about narrative is our new Aristotle.”
“Alison’s close readings can be exhilarating…[and] Alison’s prose is potent and lush, her enthusiasm infectious.”
“You don’t have to be a professional writer to enjoy novelist Jane Alison’s brilliant new craft guide.”
“A book on the craft of writing that is also fun to read…She offers writers the freedom to explore but with enough guidance to thrive.”
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