Every day I write the book : notes on style / Amitava Kumar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kumar, Amitava, 1963- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Academic writing.

English language--Rhetoric.

English language.

Physical Description:

pages cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2020.

Summary:

"Every day I write the book, a guide to style and writing for academics, is Amitava Kumar's fifth book of creative nonfiction with Duke University Press. Written in short first-person vignettes, this book melds form and content to explore the writing process both in and out of the academy, while offering a portrait of Kumar's writing life throughout. Kumar, whose background is in literary theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory, has long been a critic of academic writing and an advocate for academics to write in a more 'writerly' style. This book is an attempt to bring together reflections on Kumar's own writing style and models used by other academics. It notably collects firsthand testimony on writing from many established writers and academics-Anna Tsing, Jack Halberstam, Rob Nixon, and Kathleen Stewart, to name a few-and engages with the work of contemporary nonfiction writers such as Geoff Dyer, Claudia Rankine, and Maggie Nelson. The book is divided into nine sections-each with several sub-chapters-and two appendixes: Kumar's "Ten Rules of Writing" and a reprinted PEN 10 interview. It will be of wide interest to readers of creative nonfiction, as well as to scholars and students of writing and rhetoric"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part I Self-Help

Misery p. 5

Good Sentences p. 6

Read No Secondary Literature p. 7

Read Junk p. 9

Failure p. 10

Running p. 12

Sleep p. 15

Kitchen Timer p. 16

Self-Help p. 17

Part II Writing a Book: A Brief History

Rules of Writing p. 23

In Memory of p. 24

Out of Place p. 26

Eyes on the Ground p. 28

The End of the Line p. 30

Creative Criticism p. 31

How to Throw Your Body p. 36

I'm Feeling Myself p. 38

Creative Writing p. 39

Part III Credos

Declarations of Independence p. 47

In Praise of Nonfiction p. 54

There Is No Single Way p. 56

How Proust Can Ruin Your Life p. 57

Reality Hunger p. 58

Depend on Your Dumbness p. 60

Blackness (Unmitigated) p. 62

Rage on the Page p. 63

On Training p. 68

Light Years p. 71

Neither/Nor p. 72

Criticism by Other Means p. 75

Paranoid Theory p. 77

Erotic Style p. 80

I Blame the Topic Sentence p. 82

The Sound and the Fury p. 83

In Defense of the Fragment p. 86

Kids p. 88

Part V Academic Interest

Diana Studies p. 91

Examined Life p. 95

Occupy Writing p. 96

Academic Sentence p. 98

Dissertation Blah p. 100

Your Job Is to Know a Lot p. 102

Anti-Anti Jargon p. 104

Monograph p. 107

Part VI Style

But Life p. 111

Sugared Violets p. 112

Voice p. 113

Wikileaks Manual of Style p. 117

Detecting Style p. 118

Strunk and White p. 120

A Clean English Sentence p. 122

Trade p. 126

Recommendation Letter p. 128

Bad Writing p. 137

Prompt p. 139

Post-Its p. 141

Revising p. 142

Editing p. 144

Performing It p. 146

Rituals p. 149

For Graduate Students p. 152

Not Writing p. 161

Part VIII The Groves of Academe

Academe p. 165

Stoner p. 167

Common Sense p. 169

Titles p. 170

Campus Criticism p. 172

Farther Away p. 176

Accountability p. 177

Tenure Files p. 179

Part IX Materials Photographs, etc. p. 187

"Who's Got the Address?" (a Collaboration with Teju Cole) p. 190.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Kumar, Amitava, 1963- Every day I write the book.

ISBN:

9781478006275

9781478005827

1478005823

1478006277

OCLC:

1102473655

Publisher Number:

99983955962