From Publishers Weekly
With her essays regularly appearing in high-profile periodicals, anthologies and partisan-attracting books like Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love, Gornick is one of a handful of nonfiction prose stylists whose work is instantly recognizable to the literati and crititocracy. Based on many years' teaching in a variety of creative writing programs, Gornick's book discusses ways of making nonfiction writing highly personal without being pathetically self-absorbed. In admirably plain and direct style, she discusses writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde, Joan Didion and a man she calls the "Jewish Joan Didion," Seymour Krim. Part of the virtue of this book is Gornick's wide-ranging reading, which comprises less-than-household names like Jean Amery, a Belgium-based Holocaust survivor, and the noted Italian author Natalia Ginzburg. By excerpting and condensing freely, she presents chosen texts in speedily absorbed format, which is useful for the primer-style approach here, even if some of the original authors might object to being Readers Digested in this manner. All the texts do nevertheless support her statement that essays can "be read the way poems and novels are read, inside the same kind of context, the one that enlarges the relationship between life and literature." (Sept.) Forecast: Poised for a warm embrace in writing programs and college seminars, this slim tome from a nonfiction master will undoubtedly inspire young writers, while Gornick's loyal fans will enjoy her unmistakable erudition and felicitous prose. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Noted critic/essayist Gornick (Fierce Attachments) has taught creative writing for decades, and this is the repository of her experience. She divides her subject into two parts: the essay and the memoir. While the latter essentially reflects personal experience, Gornick reminds us that an essayist is also writing personally. Drawing on classic essayists from George Orwell to Oscar Wilde, Gornick analyzes the writers' lives and sees their essays as much as possible through their eyes. She is careful to distinguish the teaching of the writing process from teaching writing, which she dismisses as impossible. Using lengthy excerpts from her favorites, Gornick presents a psychology of writing. Teaching thus by example, she creates a spare but elegant tool. Recommended for academic and public collections.- Robert Moore, Itworld.com, Southboro, MA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
For Gornick, writing and teaching writing are about reading attentively, searchingly, and it is her skill in reading and thinking hard about what she's read that drives this brisk and clarifying discussion of the art of personal nonfiction. The author of various bracing nonfiction narratives, including The End of the Novel of Love (1997), Gornick recounts her early experiences writing personal journalism and the struggle she had with establishing her writing persona. Beginning with an analysis of an essay by Orwell, she posits the question, What makes a reader believe that a nonfiction narrator is trustworthy? This leads to the daunting challenge that faces every essayist and memoirist: How do you create a persona who is and yet isn't yourself? Gornick's illuminating, stirring answers to these crucial questions involve incisive overviews of the essay and memoir genres and extended interpretations of writings by Thomas De Quincey, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Edward Hoagland, Geoffrey Wolff, Loren Eiseley, and Margueurite Duras, among others, adept and instructive analyses that unveil each work's "inner life." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Jane Brox, The Boston Sunday Globe
". . . guide for those aspiring to write their [own narrative] . . . [goes] a long way toward sorting out . . . what the genre is."


Review
"The Situation and the Story [is] an elegant, concise, unlocking of the mystery of personal narrative. It's changed my thinking already and should be on every writer's bookshelf."
--Elaine Showalter , author of The Madwoman in the Attic

"A wonderful illumination of some of the best and most moving
writers of personal narrative, by a writer whose own graceful style and
exemplary forthrightness make this a most rewarding book for both the
college classroom and one's own favorite armchair."
--Lydia Davis

"Vivian Gornick is an extraordinary writer of personal narrative. In her articulate and compelling new book, we learn about the craft, about Gornick specifically, and about the writer's life generally. Her incisive and vivid blend of story and information conveys the essence and the challenge of the creative nonfiction genre and is an example of what the genre can do."
--Lee Gutkind, author of The Art of Creative Nonfiction

"Vivian Gornick writes with distilled wisdom and practiced accuracy. I trust her intuition absolutely."
--Sven Birkert

"We have long needed a book like this, which would put the field of creative non-fiction into thoughtful perspective, X-ray its secrets, and raise its standards. Vivian Gornick has done all that and more, producing a brilliant exegesis that is both analysis and exemplar of the difficult art of personal narrative. She brings a laser-like focus to her subject, while complicating it at every turn with moral nuance. The writing is both eloquent and elegant; the sentences have bite; the whole thing is an exhilarating read."
--Phillip Lopate



Book Description
A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love

All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth.

How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.

This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid inteligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of ninfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.



About the Author
Vivian Gornick's books include Fierce Attachments, Approaching Eye Level, and The End of the Novel of Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998. She lives in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator, but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth." "How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the reliable narrator who will tell the story that needs to be told? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks, and answers. Using some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Vivian Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, and Oscar Wilde." This book, which grew out of fifteen years of teaching in M.F.A. programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

SYNOPSIS

This guide to writing memoirs and first-person essays shows how to write by showing how to read and recognize the truth in the writing of others. The book, which grew out of the author's 15 years of teaching in M.F.A. programs, demonstrates the enduring truth speaker to be found in the work of well-known and less-know writers including Oscar Wilde, Joan Didion, and James Baldwin. This edition contains a brief guide for writers, teachers, and students, with exercises, discussion topics, and reading suggestions. There is no subject index. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Jane Brox - The Boston Sunday Globe

guide for those aspiring to write their [own narrative] . . . [goes] a long way toward sorting out . . . what the genre is.

Library Journal

Noted critic/essayist Gornick (Fierce Attachments) has taught creative writing for decades, and this is the repository of her experience. She divides her subject into two parts: the essay and the memoir. While the latter essentially reflects personal experience, Gornick reminds us that an essayist is also writing personally. Drawing on classic essayists from George Orwell to Oscar Wilde, Gornick analyzes the writers' lives and sees their essays as much as possible through their eyes. She is careful to distinguish the teaching of the writing process from teaching writing, which she dismisses as impossible. Using lengthy excerpts from her favorites, Gornick presents a psychology of writing. Teaching thus by example, she creates a spare but elegant tool. Recommended for academic and public collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/01.] Robert Moore, Itworld.com, Southboro, MA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews