Writing through writer's block : lessons from modern American fiction / Aaron Colton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Colton, Aaron, 1990- Author.

Series:

New American canon

The new American canon : the Iowa series in contemporary literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Writer's block in literature.

Writer's block.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

265 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [2025]

Summary:

"This monograph is the first major study of a pervasive but overlooked figure in postwar American fiction: the blocked writer. It argues that the impacts of this character are as diverse as its many variants in postwar, postmodernist, and contemporary literature. With chapters analyzing writer's block in works by authors such as Philip Roth, Lucy Ives, Ben Lerner, and Salvador Plascencia, it reveals how authors have used the figure of the blocked writer to critique modern forces that might constrain a writer's creativity including rigid dogma in MFA programs and ethnic stereotyping in the publishing industry. In doing so, the book offers fresh perspectives on autofiction, metafiction, and novelistic engagements with literary institutions and culture. In addition, the book also demonstrates how representations of writer's block might offer practical lessons, such as what it takes to overcome perfectionism, how to break one's reliance on inspiration, and how to transform one's frustrations into rich material for analysis or adaptation. In order to reveal the critical and practical insights embedded in representations of writer's block, this book utilizes methodologies from both English and Writing Studies, challenging the tendency in academia today to separate the study of literature from the study of writing. By reading fiction through a Writing Studies lens, the book argues, English gains a sharp perspective on an essential but overlooked literary archetype. And by considering the lessons in composition found in representations of blocked writers, it demonstrates how literary texts might provide Writing Studies with a valuable examples for understanding how writing practices, blocks, and breakthroughs work"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: What we write about when we write about writer's block

The MFA : rewriting programmatic dogma with David Foster Wallace and Lucy Ives

Typecasting : confounding ethnic tokenization with Nam Le and Philip Roth

Public image, personal brand, and compositional control : overcoming perfectionism with Sheila Heti and Salvador Plascencia

Beyond writer's block : the exchange of blocked writers and blocked painters with Ben Lerner and Bernard Malamud

Coda: The case for bridging literary studies and writing studies.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version Colton, Aaron, 1990- Writing through writer's block

ISBN:

9781685970321

168597032X

OCLC:

1517929514