essays

Any writer, anywhere, needs to read this book. I assign it to undergraduate and graduate students alike. Charles Baxter explores essential elements of fiction here, and has some surprising, convincing new ideas. He writes in a witty, reflective, fascinating voice that makes these essays a pleasure to read.

Reading this book transforms people's writing, deepening their approach and understanding. Take a look at his ideas about counterpointed characters, or about what replaces the idea of "conflict" in fiction.

An amazing, brilliant book.

I'm stunned by Charles Baxter's erudition and originality. It surprises me that out of academia and the midwest this global thinker emerges, seeing through the traps of contemporary writing, the slippery slopes of me-themes and victimization that we so indulge in this country. And yet he's positive and instructive and kind. And readable, every sentence bursts with intelligence and wit. If I could study writing with anyone in the world, it would be Charles Baxter. He is the most intelligent and insightful tour-guide I have yet met. Highly recommended!!

Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter is a refreshingly broad take on a number of issues facing writers and readers of serious fiction today. The title reminds me of a story Harry Crews once told concerning his early days learning the craft of fiction. He had given an early story to his teacher, Alan Tate, and when he asked what Tate thought of it he got the reply that "Fire is a great purifier" - so went home, burned his story and started over. Baxter seems to want to burn away a lot of what has come to dominate the literary scene. He bemoans the lack of real antagonists and villians in what he refers to as "dysfunctional" fiction. He decries the passive voice and ambiguos tone that writing in which no one is really accountable (which he blames largely on the polictical rhetoric of Nixon, Reagan,and Busch which he says has robbed the public of the proper 'story' of the last few decades).

This book of essays is enjoyable on a number of levels. One of my favorite chapters is the one in which he contrasts fiction writers with poets. This chapter is full of broad and exaggerated generalizations (which he has foretold and apologized for in advance) which are both thought provoking and often very funny. The chapter on melodrama is also very insightful and harking back to an earlier essay about dysfunctional fiction in which the characters are all victims and no one is a clear protagonist or antagonist, he shows how pure evil (a clear cut villian) is the essential ingrediant in melodrama and that is why melodrama continues to interest readers while lots of serious fiction doesn't register. He further shows how melodrama underpins some of the great fiction - using Chekov, that most unmelodramatic writer, as an example.

I really enjoyed this book and read it at one sitting - which is probably not good. There is so much that is thought provoking in these essays that they deserve more time and a lot of rumination. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in serious fiction today. It will give you a lot to think about.