Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

How to read novels like a professor, Thomas C. Foster

eng

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non fiction

How to read novels like a professor

electronic resource eBook

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Thomas C. Foster

Of all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed... and fretted over. From Miguel Cervantes "Don Quixote" to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and today's masters, the novel has grown with and adapted to changing societies and technologies, mixing tradition and innovation in every age throughout history. Thomas C. Foster, the sage and scholar who ingeniously led readers through the fascinating symbolic codes of great litrature in his first book, "How to Read Literature Like a Professor", now examines the grammar of the popular novel. Exloring how authors' choices about structure, point of view, narrative voice, first page, chapter construction, character emblems, and narrative (dis)continuity, create meaning and a special literary language, "How to Read Novels Like a Professor" shares the keys to this language with readers who want to get more insight, more understanding, and more pleasure from their reading

Preface: Novel possibilities, or all animals aren't pigs? -- Introduction: Once upon a time : a short, chaotic, and entirely idiosyncratic history of the novel -- Pickup lines and open(ing) seductions or, why novels have first pages -- You can't breathe where the air is clear -- Who's in charge here? -- Never trust a narrator with a speaking part -- A still, small voice (or a great, galumphing one) -- Men (and women) made out of words, or, My pip ain't like your pip -- When very bad people happen to good novels -- Wrinkles in time, or Chapters just might matter -- Everywhere is just one place -- Clarissa's flowers -- Met-him-pike-hoses -- Life sentences -- Drowning in the stream of consciousness -- The light on Daisy's dock -- Fiction about fiction -- Source codes and recycle bins -- Interlude: Read with your ears -- Improbabilities : foundlings and magi, colonels and boy wizards -- What's the big idea--or even the small one? -- Who broke my novel? -- Untidy endings -- History in the novel/the novel in history -- Conspiracy theory -- Conclusion: The never-ending journey