The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts

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The articles with which David Lodge entertained and delighted readers of the Independent on Sunday and The Washington Post are now revised, expanded, and collected together in book form.

The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Time-shift, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and each topic is illustrated by a passage or two taken from classic or modern fiction. Drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James and Martin Amis, Jane Austen and Fay Weldon and Henry Fielding and James Joyce, David Lodge makes accesible to the general reader the richness and variety of British and American fiction. Technical terms, such as Interior Monologue, Metafiction, Intertextuality and the Unreliable Narrator, are lucidly explained and their applications demonstrated.

Bringing to criticism the verve and humour of his own novels, David Lodge has provided essential reading for students of literature, aspiring writers, and anyone who wishes to understand how literature works.

Beginning --
The intrusive author --
Suspense --
Teenage Skaz --
The epistolary novel --
Point of view --
Mystery --
Names --
The stream of consciousness --
Interior monologue --
Defamiliarization --
The sense of place --
Lists --
Introducing a character --
Surprise --
Time-shift --
The reader in the text --
Weather --
Repetition --
Fancy prose --
Intertextuality --
The experimental novel --
The comic novel --
Magic realism --
Staying on the surface --
Showing and telling --
Telling in different voices --
A sense of the past . Imagining the future --
Symbolism --
Allegory --
Epiphany --
Coincidence --
The unreliable narrator --
The exotic --
Chapters etc. --
The telephone --
Surrealism --
Irony --
Motivation --
Duration --
Implication --
The title --
Ideas --
The non-fiction novel --
Metafiction --
The uncanny --
Narrative structure --
Aporia --
Ending