Graywolf Press of St. Paul, MN is publishing a series of books on the art of literary writing, each focusing on a different aspect of that art. Judging from the two I’ve read so far, this may well become the definitive collection for writers, teachers, and readers.

Ron Carlson Writes a Story, by (surprise!) Ron Carlson, takes us through the writing of one of his short stories, discussing his creative process in nearly a line by line fashion. The book is perhaps a more useful version of Robert Olen Butler’s video of himself writing, and it is also reminiscent of Roland Barthes’ S/Z, which offered a line by line analysis of Balzac’s “Sarrasine.” Carlson starts by talking about where the general idea for the story (”The Governor’s Ball”) came from, moves on to how he named his characters, and then to how he placed them in a specific setting. In discussing dialogue, he dismisses the old view that it should serve mainly to advance plot. Carlson’s advice is for the writer of a more modern, character-driven fiction, where dialogue exists as a window into the unconscious and the unsayable, a window into subtext.

In The Art of Subtext, Minneapolis novelist Charles Baxter goes beyond many previous books on the writing of fiction. Baxter believes that fictional techniques work when they are rooted in basic cultural assumptions; therefore, his technical advice comes from a provocative meditation on who we are today. He asks why, for instance, writers no longer introduce characters with lengthy verbal portraits of their faces. To summarize Baxter crudely, it is because in a world of makeovers and simulations, we no longer trust appearances. The techniques by which an author creates subtext are important precisely because in our culture truth itself has gone underground.

If you have a serious interest in literature, I recommend that you keep up with Graywolf Press and its new series on the art of literary writing. Other topics to be covered in this series are the art of time in memoir, the art of time in fiction, the art of description, and the art of endings.

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