To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction

Lopate (director, graduate nonfiction program, Columbia Univ.; The Art of the Personal Essay) offers here another title in what seems to be a whirlwind of recent publishing on creative nonfiction. His discussions and opinions primarily concern the personal essay as representative of the wider genre of literary nonfiction. Lopate is particularly successful in probing the psychological aspects of such factual, intimate writing. His advice is as ruminative and open-ended as the writing style he seeks to draw out of his students, a more philosophical and thought-provoking take on the craft of literary nonfiction than can be found in most of the other choices on this subject. The first part, "The Craft of Personal Narrative," contains the bulk of the text. Section two, "Studies of Practitioners," covers Lopate's favorite essayists, including Charles Lamb, Edward Hoagland, and James Baldwin.