The Situation and the Story - by Vivian Gornick (Paperback)

About the Book

Taking readers on a 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, and Marguerite Duras.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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

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.