Nonconformity: Writing on Writing

I've been writing for ten years and this book has become a bible for me. I planned on reading one chapter one night before going to bed, and instead stayed up until dawn reading it and thinking about what the author's compelling essays. It's the best book I've ever read about the art of writing and the responsibility of writers.It used to be much easier to submit reviews. These days every company pretends like its website is the only one people will ever visit on the web. Gack.

This book stalks sure footed through the dense thicket of modern American literature, with The Novel and Nelson Algren firmly at its center. It is at once entirely personal and, sonehow, universal at the same time. What it has to say about about writing evokes the kindred spirit shared by all great writiers, vastlty differing though thier style and temperments might be. Each exquisitely realized chapter is peppered with excerpts of their prose in such a way that it fairly leaps off the page, providing a critical mass of context and vibrancy to the very difficult subject of what it is that writers do and do best. Get it. Read it. Love it. I certainly did.