The Art of Fiction (book)

The Art of Fiction is a book of literary criticism by the British academic and novelist David Lodge. The chapters of the book first appeared in 1991–1992 as weekly columns in The Independent on Sunday and were eventually gathered into book form and published in 1992. The essays as they appear in the book have in many cases been expanded from their original format.

Lodge focuses each chapter upon one aspect of the art of fiction, comprising some fifty topics pertaining to novels or short stories by English and American writers. Every chapter also begins with a passage from classic or modern literature that Lodge feels embodies the technique or topic at hand. Some of the topics Lodge analyzes are Beginning (the first chapter), The Intrusive Author, The Epistolary Novel, Magic realism, Irony, symbolism, and Metafiction. Among the authors he quotes in order to illustrate his points are Jane Austen, J. D. Salinger, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Martin Amis, F. Scott Fitzgerald and even himself. In the preface of the book, Lodge informs that this book is for the general reader but technical vocabulary has been used deliberately to educate the reader. He further adds that the alternative title of the book would have been "The Rhetoric of Fiction" had it not been used already by writer Wayne Booth.

Chapters

 * 1) Beginning Jane Austen Emma, Ford Madox Ford, "    Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich ..."
 * 2) The Intrusive Author George Eliot, E. M. Forster
 * 3) Suspense Thomas Hardy
 * 4) Teenage Skaz J. D. Salinger
 * 5) The Epistolary Novel Michael Frayn
 * 6) Point of View Henry James
 * 7) Mystery Rudyard Kipling
 * 8) Names David Lodge, Paul Auster
 * 9) The Stream of Consciousness Virginia Woolf
 * 10) Interior Monologue James Joyce
 * 11) Defamiliarisation Charlotte Brontë
 * 12) The Sense of Place Martin Amis
 * 13) Lists F. Scott Fitzgerald
 * 14) Introducing a Character Christopher Isherwood
 * 15) Surprise William Makepeace Thackeray
 * 16) Time-Shift Muriel Spark
 * 17) The Reader in the Text Laurence Sterne
 * 18) Weather Jane Austen, Charles Dickens
 * 19) Repetition Ernest Hemingway
 * 20) Fancy Prose Vladimir Nabokov
 * 21) Intertextuality Joseph Conrad
 * 22) The Experimental Novel Henry Green
 * 23) The Comic Novel Kingsley Amis
 * 24) Magic Realism Milan Kundera
 * 25) Staying on the Surface Malcolm Bradbury
 * 26) Showing and Telling Henry Fielding
 * 27) Telling in Different Voices Fay Weldon
 * 28) A Sense of the Past John Fowles
 * 29) Imagining the Future George Orwell
 * 30) Symbolism D. H. Lawrence
 * 31) Allegory Samuel Butler
 * 32) Epiphany John Updike
 * 33) Coincidence Henry James
 * 34) The Unreliable Narrator Kazuo Ishiguro
 * 35) The Exotic Graham Greene
 * 36) Chapters etc. Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, Walter Scott, George Eliot, James Joyce
 * 37) The Telephone Evelyn Waugh
 * 38) Surrealism Leonora Carrington
 * 39) Irony Arnold Bennett
 * 40) Motivation George Eliot
 * 41) Duration Donald Barthelme
 * 42) Implication William Cooper
 * 43) The Title George Gissing
 * 44) Ideas Anthony Burgess
 * 45) The Non-Fiction Novel Thomas Carlyle
 * 46) Metafiction John Barth
 * 47) The Uncanny Edgar Allan Poe
 * 48) Narrative Structure Leonard Michaels
 * 49) Aporia Samuel Beckett
 * 50) Ending Jane Austen, William Golding