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Freedom Book of the Month for March 2000
The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers
by Ayn Rand
edited by Tore Boeckmann
Plume, January 2000, paperback, 180 pp.
$12.95 from Laissez Faire Books
If you've ever turned the last page of a book without being able to say why you liked (or didn't like) it, or thrown a half-completed story or novel in the trash because something -- something you can't identify -- is just "wrong" about it, "The Art of Fiction" is the book you've been looking for.
In 1958, on the heels of the completion and publication of "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand gave an informal series of lectures to a small audience in her living room. This book constitutes the "meat" of those 48 hours of talks, edited and organized by Tore Boeckmann into a compact but powerful course on the elements of fiction.
Don't be fooled by the small size of "The Art of Fiction." It covers a lot of ground, including Theme, Plot, Plot-Theme (yes, there is a difference between the two separate elements and their concatenation), Characterization, and Climax, and still has room to deal with particular issues of style (flashbacks, transitions, metaphors, etc.) and to offer detailed analyses of various literary passages from the works of Victor Hugo, Thomas Wolfe, Sinclair Lewis, Mickey Spillane, and others, as well as from Rand's own work, and some thoughts on "special forms of literature" such as humor and fantasy.
Example by example, Rand leads the reader (as she led her listeners 42 years ago) through the elements of a piece, pointing out not only where it succeeds or fails, but why.
Readers looking for philosophical nuggets outside the realm of the solely esthetic won't be disappointed, either. If nothing else, Rand's handling of conflict flaunts the dialectical method that Chris Matthew Sciabarra hypothesized in "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical," and which has been a bone of contention among Objectivists and Rand scholars ever since. Moreover, the book offers us a glimpse of one personal element that Rand held to be of great importance: her sense of life. The cold, angry polemicist of so many non-fiction essays is nowhere to be found in "The Art of Fiction." Revealed is the dedicated novelist, at the peak of her career, holding forth on the real love of her life.
In many ways, "The Art of Fiction" is a completion of Rand's "Romantic Manifesto." I find it superior to that book in its detailed examination of the Romantic versus Naturalist schools of literature. Like many writers, I've found that my reach exceeds my grasp when I attempt to craft fiction. I am beginning, with the help of this course, to understand why that has been so and how to correct it. Moreover, it is enjoyable to apply the book's lessons to the material I read for a better understanding of why a book "works" or doesn't.
edited by Thomas L. Knapp
June 2000: Law's Order by David Friedman
May 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith
April 2000: Reciprocia by Richard G. Rieben
March 2000: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand
February 2000: Addiction is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler
January 2000: Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood
Special December 1999 Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year: Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 by Vin Suprynowicz
November 1999: Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell
October 1999: A Way To Be Free by Robert LeFevre, edited by Wendy McElroy
September 1999: Assassins (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
August 1999: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet): 101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom by Claire Wolfe
July 1999: The Mitzvah by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman
June 1999: The Incredible Bread Machine by R.W. Grant
May 1999: Send in the Waco Killers by Vin Suprynowicz
April 1999: It Still Begins with Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille
March 1999: The Dictionary of Free-Market Economics by Fred Foldvary
February 1999: Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra
In December 2004 this page was modified significantly from its original form for archiving purposes.
, founded in 1995, is now a part of ISIL.
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