The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes » (Original)

"I know no one else who writes as Joan Silber does, with such an immediate contemporary voice, about our secret yearnings for a spiritual life," observes Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona.

Fiction imagines for us a stopping point from which life can be seen as intelligible,” asserts Joan Silber in The Art of Time in Fiction. The end point of a story determines its meaning, and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration of a plot. Silber uses wide-ranging examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chinua Achebe, and Arundhati Roy, among others, to illustrate five key ways in which time unfolds in fiction. In clear-eyed prose, Silber elucidates a tricky but vital aspect of the art of fiction.

Library Journal

In this slim volume—part of a series that explores aspects of creative writing (e.g., Donald Revell's The Art of Attention; Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext)—novelist Silber (The Size of the World) divides time into five categories (classic time, long time, switchback time, slowed time, and fabulous time). She examines the novels or short stories of many disparate authors and how they use the concepts of time to advance their plots, create mood, or show character development. Silber's writing is clear and direct, and her choice of exemplary authors apt. VERDICT While this study (and the eight others in the series) is geared to aspiring fiction writers or poets, it will also be of interest to nonwriters who are fascinated by literature and how the enjoyment of works of art can be enhanced by knowing how authors use techniques to make their works effective.—Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology Lib., CUNY