The Art of Subtext

July 23, 2007
Though there are passages where this slim, college-lecture-style volume turns facile or tiresome, novelist Baxter's analysis of "the implied, the half-visible, and the unspoken" in literature is saved from irrelevance by a keen sense of pacing and a healthy dose of self-awareness (after confidently zooming through seminal works by Herman Melville, John Cheever, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Baxter confesses, "I feel that ... I am on the verge of what Walt Whitman calls 'a usual mistake.' I don't wish to simplify what is actually intricate"). Indeed, as the brief chapters of this little book build on each other, Baxter's observations-which initially seem more like interesting rhetorical devices than substantive arguments-gain clarity and momentum, and the accumulation of anecdotal asides about writers' workshops and former students turn them from annoying interjections into helpful indicators of Baxter's relationship with literature. Many of the issues raised in this volume are as old as the study of literature itself, but Baxter's ability to ask unusual and incisive questions of familiar topics (Why is the volatility of Dostoyevsky's characters so unpleasant? Why is it so difficult-and yet so vital-to describe facial features?) makes this little volume worthwhile for the engaged student of literature.

September 1, 2007
Think of subtext in fiction as water; its characters, swimmers on the surface. Like water, subtext is everywhere, ubiquitous and buoyant, darker in its depths, the stuff of immersion. The beauty of Baxter's ("The Feast of Love") inaugural entry in Graywolf's new "Art of" series, which draws on examples in literature to instruct on the writing craft, is that it doesn't assume to try and capture the whole of subtext. What book could? Instead, it focuses on very specific qualities composing it: the art of staging in a story, the importance of inflection in dialog, the ambiguity of motivation. To make the often translucent substance more visible, Baxter highlights excerpts from a wide range of fiction, from the contemporaneous and familiar to the foreign and esoteric.It is the watchedthe attended toworld of which poetry is made. That is the premise of Revell's ("Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems") entry in the series. It is the rapt attention of the poet that can elevate a poem to a position of timelessness, where the poem is always happening, always present, and the reader always cares. Revell defines what it means to be fully attentive, describes the consequences of such a state, and explains how poets can renew their own lapsed attentions through the art of translation. In his final chapter, he surveys his own body of work to show how the way in which he has attended to the world has changed over time. Baxter's book will help readers read more creatively and writers to float their stories; both his and Revell's books are highly recommended for all academic libraries.Maria Kochis, California State Univ. Lib., Sacramento

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.