Fourth Genre, The: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction

Description

The Fourth Genre offers the most comprehensive, teachable, and current introduction available today to the cutting-edge, evolving genre of creative nonfiction. While acknowledging the literary impulse of nonfiction to be a fourth genre equivalent to poetry, fiction, and drama, this text focuses on subgenres of the nonfiction form, including memoir, nature writing, personal essays, literary journalism, cultural criticism, and travel writing. This anthology was the first to draw on the common ground of the practicing writer and the practical scholar and to make the pedagogical connections between creative writing practice and composition theory, bridging some of the gaps between the teaching of composition, creative writing, and literature in English departments. Review: Five Stars - Good textbook needed for a college course. Available in both hard cover and paper back. This best-selling anthology is a comprehensive and indispensable introduction to the way creative nonfiction is written today. The Fourth Genre offers the most comprehensive, teachable, and current introduction available today to the cutting-edge, evolving genre of creative nonfiction. While acknowledging the literary impulse of nonfiction to be a fourth genre equivalent to poetry, fiction, and drama, this text focuses on subgenres of the nonfiction form, including memoir, nature writing, personal essays, literary journalism, cultural criticism, and travel writing. Editorial Reviews From the Back Cover Whether writers, readers or scholars, the individuals who read this book will gain much from it. A unique, special genre, creative nonfiction offers its readers a wealth of treasures. It provides the writer's singular voice as an active participant in his or her own experience. It may offer the writer's attempt to establish or define an identity, to explore and chronicle personal discoveries and changes, to examine personal conflicts, to interrogate his or her own opinion, and to connect him or herself to a larger heritage and community. It can be lyrical, expository, meditative, informational , reflective, self-interrogative, exploratory, analytical, or whimsical. But whatever form and meaning it takes, the creative nonfiction in this book provides its readers with the pleasure of reading great tales and dramas and with the learning experience of understanding the process through which to write these literary achievements. An anthology of work by major figures in creative nonfiction, this book offers the most thorough introduction to this cutting-edge genre. Its approach is both literary and writerly, focusing on the form and acknowledging the literary impulse in nonfiction as a fourth genre equivalent in scope to the three genres of poetry, fiction, and drama. Part I compiles an anthology of contemporary essays, memoirs, literary journalism, and personal cultural criticism. Part II presents articles discussing the forms and issues surrounding the fourth genre. Part II pairs essays and memoirs with articles by their authors explaining their composing process when they wrote the essays. Included are contributions by Scott Russell Sanders, Richard Selzer, Anne Dillard, Mary Clearman Blew, Tracy Kidder, Donald Murray, and other noted writers. Writers, readers, scholars and teachers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author ROBERT R. ROOT, JR., is Professor of English at Central Michigan University. Michael Steinberg has taught at several universities and conservatories, was music critic of The Boston Globe, has contributed to numerous periodicals, and served as program annotator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. His program notes have been collected in three Listener's Guides on The Symphony, The Concerto, and Choral Masterworks. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Larry Rothe has been publications editor of the San Francisco Symphony since 1984. His articles have appeared in Symphony magazine, Playbill, and Stagebill, and he is co-editor of American Mavericks: Visionaries, Pioneers, Iconoclasts. He lives in Berkeley, California. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. Review: Fantastic essays, great reading even if you're not a writer - The Fourth Genre graces most creative-writing course lists, and for good reason: In addition to outstanding essays written in every style and on every topic imaginable, it offers essays and commentary about the writing process, style, and form. But don't be put off if you're just looking for excellent reading. This isn't dense, heavy, or academic. The essays are brilliant precisely because you are hooked from the first sentence of each one. These are fine storytellers, and their stories resonate. This is a book for any lover of true stories, nonfiction, essays, or great writing. It's also a compilation of essays, so you can pick it up and read a complete essay (story), then set it aside until you have time to read again, which was perfect for my too-busy-to-read life these days. If you like short stories, nonfiction stories, or great first-person journalism (like "Into Thin Air"), you'll like this.