Category: News
excerpt in Publishers Weekly: “Beyond Freytag’s Triangle”
Why should anything as inventive as fiction follow a fixed form, the “narrative arc”? Like its equivalent in nature, a wave, the arc is a beautiful shape, but so many other natural patterns form our world. . . . Two novels that I see following other patterns are Mary Robison’s Why Did Did I Ever, a helter-skelter narrative spinning around a trauma; and Jamaica Kincaid’s Mr. Potter, a slow, spiraling conjuring of an absent father.
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Deeply Wacky
The New Yorker‘s Katy Waldman finds “deeply wacky pleasures” in Meander, Spiral, Explode:
“The book’s stakes are surprisingly erotic. . . . Like Peter Brooks, Alison sees narrative shapes as expressions of desire. She wants to invest a scholarly project—that of expanding fiction’s formal possibilities—with erotic promise, a sense of liberation.”
April 2, 2019: Book Launch at New Dominion Bookshop
Join us as we celebrate the release of Jane Alison’s new book, Meander, Spiral, Explode. A signing will follow. This event is free and open to the public. 7 – 8pm.
Event Information: https://ndbookshop.com/events/jane-alison-book-launch-meander-spiral-explode/
New Dominion Bookshop
404 East Main St
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434-295-2552
staff@ndbookshop.com
April 4, 2019: Experimental Forms in Narrative with Jane Alison
Old Town Books
104 S. Union Street
Alexandria, VA
Event Page: https://www.visitalexandriava.com/event/experimental-forms-in-narrative-with-jane-alison/14876/
“Join us for a technique-focused talk about writing experimental narrative forms.
UVA writing professor Jane Alison illuminates the many shapes other than the usual wavelike “narrative arc” that can move fiction forward. The stories she loves most follow other organic patterns found in nature—spirals, meanders, and explosions, among others.
Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. In this liberating manifesto Alison issues a call to action: Let’s leave the outdated modes behind bring feeling back to experimentation on the page. This book on the craft of writing will appeal to readers and writers alike.”
Meander, Spiral, Explode!
My new book, on design and pattern in narrative, will be out in April. Thank you, Emily Forland, Pat Strachan, and Catapult!
Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison (Pre-Order)
The Difference Between Solitude and Loneliness: PW Talks with Jane Alison
In Nine Island, Alison tells the story of a solitary woman living in a Miami high-rise apartment, who considers retiring from love and is obsessed with Ovid’s poems.
The narrator of your book, J, spends a lot of her time looking out the window of her high-rise, yet her apartment is covered in mirrors. Is she more interested in looking outward than looking inward?
Interesting observation. She does spend a lot of time thinking about—obsessing about—pondering issues in her inner self, so it’s a relief to cast herself outward. She is fascinated by how other people—or pelicans or iguanas—behave and almost loses her own sense of self when watching. She’s also at an age when her own bodily reflection is more irritating than anything else. But those mirrors are good for expanding the sense of space, doubling the sky. If you start feeling extreme loneliness or even depression, you may seek calgary weed delivery services to access cbd products that can help relax your mind. Trust the secure betting platform of แพลตฟอร์มการเดิมพันที่ปลอดภัยของ ยูฟ่าเบท for a worry-free experience.
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