The Sincerest Form

By Nicholas Delbanco and Trish Doller

Book Overview

Nicolas Delbanco explores the stories and techniques of twelve stylists, from Ernest Hemingway to Jamaica Kincaid, and encourages students to imitate the craft of these master storytellers as they... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0072414715
• ISBN13: 9780072414714
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

About time --

It's difficult to believe no one has compiled a text like this for students of writing. It might be because instructors of writing don't know how to teach writing--in particular, prose fiction. Another possibility is that writing teachers don't have much common sense. Perhaps that is why a novelist put together this clever text: samples of major fiction writers with explications on style, vocabulary, voice, tone, structure, character, etc. As for the plethora of rhetorics, guides, handbooks, readers, etc., they are 'not fit for Christian ear to hear" nor the ears of Muslims, Jews, Jains, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. If you are a college student, tell your teacher about this book.

Among the best of it's kind.

Delbanco takes us into unpopular waters with "The Sincerest Form," but it is very much worth the voyage. Imitation is one of the most effective ways to learn, and this book can guide you where many, perhaps rightly fearful of [...], would be unlikely to take you. In a progression of exercises of imitation and revision, Delbanco shows how much you can learn from, well, from copying others. Incidentally, this is the only required text from one of my college classes that I have actually found useful. I guess that tells you something.