“What is enthralling and illuminating about The Metaphysical Club is its portraits of individuals and their milieus. Menand is wonderfully deft at evoking a climate of ideas or a cultural sensibility, embodying it in a character, and moving his characters into and out of one another's lives. What might have been a jumble of intellectual movements and colorful minor figures (...) is instead a subtle weave of entertaining narrative and astute interpretation.” Has BeensIdeasCharacterMightMovingIndividualFiguresMovementIntellectualClimateClubsNarrativeSubtleInterpretationEntertainingMinorsSensibilityPortraitsMetaphysicalMight Have BeenColorfulIlluminatingMilieuAstute Author:George Scialabba
“We cherish the conventional story of Dr. King and nonviolence, in fact, precisely because that narrative demands so little of us…This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened.” LittlesFactsStoriesMovingHappenedKingsDemandNarrativeCherishAcceptableNonviolenceConventionalDrsDisadvantagesSoothingResemblance Author:Timothy B. Tyson
“How I Shed My Skin is, simply put, a brilliant book. While I was reading, I kept thinking two things. One, this is totally shocking. Two, it's not at all shocking, but a familiar part of my life and memory. Grimsley's narrative is straightforward and plain-spoken while at the same time achingly moving and intimately honest, and it does more to explain the South than anything I've read in a long, long time.” ThinkingLongDoeTwoBookMovingReadingMemoriesHonestLong TimeSkinsSouthBrilliantFamiliarNarrativeTwo ThingsShedShockingStraightforward Author:Josephine Humphreys
“Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.” MovingPoorStyleClarityNarrativeTranslators Author:William Zinsser
“There are many things worth telling that are not quite narrative. And eternity itself possesses no beginning, middle or end. Fossils, arrowheads, castle ruins, empty crosses: from the Parthenon to the Bo Tree to a grown man's or woman's old stuffed bear, what moves us about many objects is not what remains but what has vanished. There comes a time, thanks to rivers, when a few beautiful old teeth are all that remain of the two-hundred-foot spires of life we call trees. There comes a river, whose current is time, that does a similar sculpting in the mind.” MenMindDoeTwoEndsBeautifulMovingTreeFeetMiddleObjectsBearsHundredRiversCrossesEmptyEternityRemainsCurrentsTeethRuinsThanksNarrativeFossilsCastlesThere Comes A TimeGrown ManSculptingAll That RemainsSpiresParthenon Author:David James Duncan
“The crime part is the engine that moves the narrative and allows me to write the other things I want to write about.” WantWritingMovingCrimeNarrativeEngines Author:George Pelecanos
“In everything I've written, the crime has always just been an occasion to write about other things. I don't have a picture of myself as writing crime novels. I like fairly strong narratives, but it's a way of getting a plot moving.” WayWritingMovingStrongNovelWrittenCrimeOccasionsNarrativePlotCrime NovelsPictures Of Myself Author:Peter Temple