Good Prose

October 8, 2012
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Kidder (Strength in What Remains) teams with his longtime editor Todd (formerly at the Atlantic Monthly) to write a comprehensive, practical look at the best practices of professional nonfiction writers and editors. While Kidder and Todd’s goal is to provide guidance for writing excellent “essays, memoirs, and factual narratives,” anecdotes and close readings throughout the text are an excellent resource for would-be writers of any prose genre. In an unusual move, the authors maintain their individual voices; some short sections are signed TK or RT, while other longer sections are written in an authoritative third person. Chapters offer advice from the field regarding “beginnings,” narrative, memoir, essays, factual reporting, style, the business of writing, editing, and usage. Full of quotable aphorisms, the text is nonetheless often lethargic and ends in an unsatisfying list reminiscent of Strunk and White that lacks the wisdom of the earlier chapters. Readers will find the book to be more of a textbook than a how-to, but the lessons within are worth the slog. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner Literary Agency.

Starred review from October 15, 2012
Legendary literary journalist Kidder (Strength in What Remains, 2009, etc.) and his longtime editor trade war stories and advice for the ambitious nonfiction writer. "Let's face it, this fellow can't write," an Atlantic editor told Todd about Kidder, who had been constantly revising his first feature in 1973. The authors tell this story upfront as an inspirational anecdote for young writers: Great writing is less often the product of flashes of genius than it is dogged persistence as a researcher and rewriter. The book is largely an entertaining handbook on matters of reporting (do lots of it, much more than you think you need) and style (simpler is better), but Kidder and Todd are not prescriptive the way Strunk & White and its inheritors are, and they allow greater leeway for writers. Throughout, they implore writers to shrug off the shackles of "journalese" and blog-y posturing and strive for creative, essayistic approaches. They're also forgiving, to a degree, of the imperfect memories that propel many memoirs. Outright fabrications (see James Frey) are out of line for them, but they appreciate that no memoirs "that strive to dramatize moments in the past can be wholly faithful to knowable fact." After the practical matters are settled, the two indulge in "Being Edited and Editor," a lengthy chapter in which they recall their contentious relationship tussling over paragraphs. Even here, though, the memories are studded with practical tips and memorable aphorisms--"Something is always wrong with a draft," in particular, should hang over every writer's desk. The authors also offer fine recommendations for further reading, from Frank Conroy's Stop-Time (1967) to Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012). Other writing guides have more nuts-and-bolts advice, but few combine the verve and plainspokenness of this book, which exemplifies its title.

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November 15, 2012

This title is a gem in its category. Kidder (Strength in What Remains) and veteran editor Todd (The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity), who have long worked together, have cowritten a treatise on writing nonfiction that not only focuses on art over craft, but rises to the level of art itself, while remaining accessible. The authors' nearly 40-year relationship provides background and setting for some profound ideas about factual writing. The finer points of creative nonfiction are molded into an inspiring read that will affect the would-be writer as much as Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird or Stephen King's On Writing. The tricky issue of accuracy--facts vs. truth and creative license--is handled with a light but sure touch. The closing chapter contains separate reflections, first by Kidder on the experience of being edited and then by Todd on the delicate work of editing. A brief section of usage notes and a selected bibliography are included. VERDICT This is a must read for nonfiction writers and is a strong choice as a textbook or required course reading covering the narrative nonfiction, essay, or memoir forms.--Stacey Rae Brownlie, Harrisburg Area Comm. Coll., Lancaster, PA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Kidder might not have won the Pulitzer or the National Book Award if he hadn't met editor Todd at the Atlantic Monthly in 1973. The two have been in cahoots ever since, and they now share their dedication to good prose and expertise in creating it with warmth, zest, and wit in this well-structured, to-the-point, genuinely useful, and fun-to-read guide to writing narrative nonfiction, essays, and memoir, and to being edited, a crucial, though often overlooked, step. Kidder and Todd each tell tales about the challenges they've faced in anecdotal passages that alternate with joint discussions of increasingly complex matters of content, style, and tricky moral issues that highlight the pitfalls and privileges involved in writing factual stories. Kidder and Todd also offer some of the most lucid, specific, and tested guidance available about technical essentials, from determining what makes a good nonfiction story to choosing a point of view to achieving accuracy and clarity. Rich in quotes from such standard-setting nonfiction artists as Orwell, McPhee, and Didion, Kidder and Todd's book about strong writing is crisp, informative, and mind-expanding.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)