Longman / Prentice Hall

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Fourth Genre, The: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction, 4/E
Robert L. Root, Jr., Central Michigan University, Emeritus
Michael J. Steinberg, Michigan State University, Emeritus

ISBN-10: 0321434846
ISBN-13: 9780321434845

Publisher: Longman
Copyright: 2007
Format: Paper; 544 pp
Published: 07/11/2006

Suggested retail price: $66.33
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This best-selling anthology is a comprehensive and indispensable introduction to the way creative nonfiction is written today.

 

The Fourth Genre offers the most comprehensive, teachable, and current introduction available today to the cutting-edge, evolving genre of creative nonfiction.  While acknowledging the literary impulse of nonfiction to be a fourth genre equivalent to poetry, fiction, and drama, this text focuses on subgenres of the nonfiction form, including memoir, nature writing, personal essays, literary journalism, cultural criticism, and travel writing.

 

This anthology was the first to draw on the common ground of the practicing writer and the practical scholar and to make the pedagogical connections between creative writing practice and composition theory, bridging some of the gaps between the teaching of composition, creative writing, and literature in English departments.

  • Over sixty readings represent the full range of creative nonfiction subgenres--personal narrative, essay, memoir, literary journalism, and personal cultural criticism–and showcase a full range of writerly techniques, such as linear and nonlinear presentation, associative strategies, collage, mosaic, montage, jump cuts, braiding, segmenting, and non-sequential connections.
  • Authors anthologized in Part 1 include prominent writers such as Mary Clearman Blew, Annie Dillard, Patricia Hampl, Pico Iyer, Phillip Lopate, Bret Lott, John McPhee, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Scott Russell Sanders as well as an impressive array of emerging writers such as Jo Ann Beard and Meghan Daum.
  • Part 2 features essays that explicitly address genre issues, nonfiction forms, and writing strategies; these are mostly written by authors whose work appears in Part 1.  Students witness an inside view of writers' creative processes and, at the same time, participate in the academic study of nonfiction as a literary genre.
  • Unique Part 3 pairs works of creative nonfiction with companion pieces in which their authors explain the processes, methods, and strategies they used to write and revise the paired works.
  • Two alternative tables of contents organize the readings by sub genres and approaches to writing.

  • Thirteen of over sixty selections are new to this edition.
  • Authors newly represented in Part 1, “Writing Creative Nonfiction,” include established writers Vivian Gornick, Floyd Skloot, Kim Barnes, Jonathan Lethem, and Barbara Hurd, as well as prize-winning emerging writers Shari Caudron and Erika Vidal.
  • Part 2, “Talking About Creative Nonfiction,” now has groundbreaking pieces by essayist Natalia Rachel Singer and essayist/memoirist Vivian Gornick.
  • New selections are drawn from general interest periodicals as varied as The New Yorker, Wired, the New York Times, The Kenyon Review, and The American Scholar as well as from top journals in the field of nonfiction, such as River Teeth and Fourth Genre, affording students the opportunity to see how audience, purpose, and context can influence subject as well as language and literary techniques used.
  • Brief head notes precede each reading in the anthology, serving as an aid to further reading.
  • The Instructor’s Manual includes suggestions and three sample syllabi for designing courses in creative writing practice, literary analysis, or a blend of the two.  It presents comments on the readings’ themes, analyses of the readings’ techniques, and suggests comparisons among readings for in-class work or assignments.
  • The Introduction, long useful for its historical overview of the evolution of creative nonfiction, expands the conversation with a new section on working definitions of nonfiction itself as well as of its major subgenres.

* New to this edition.

 

Contents

 

Alternative Table of Contents: Subgenres of Creative Nonfiction

Preface: Beginning the Conversation


Introduction: Creative Nonfiction, the Fourth Genre

 

I. Writing Creative Nonfiction.


Angela M. Balcita, “Dumpling.”
 
*Kim Barnes, "The Ashes of August."

Jocelyn Bartkevicius, “Out of the Garden.”

Jo Ann Beard, “Out There.”
 
*Robin Black, "The Answer That Increasingly Appeals."

Mary Clearman Blew, “The Unwanted Child.”
 
*Shari Caudron, "Befriending Barbie." 

Lisa D. Chavez, “Independence Day, Manley Hot Springs, Alaska.”

Judith Ortiz Cofer, “Silent Dancing.”

Meghan Daum, “On the Fringes of the Physical World.”

Annie Dillard, “Living Like Weasels.”
 
*Kitty Burns Florey, "Sister Bernadete's Barking Dog."

Dagoberto Gilb, “Northeast Direct.”

Adam Gopnick, “The People on the Bus.”
 
*Vivian Gornick, "On the Bus."

Patricia Hampl, “Parish Streets.”
 
*Barbara Hurd, "Fine Distinctions." 

Pico Iyer, “Where Worlds Collide.”
 
*Jennifer Kahn, "Stripped for Parts."

Nicole Lamy, “Life in Motion.”
 
*Jonathan Lethem, "13, 1977, 21."

Phillip Lopate, “Portrait of My Body.”

Bret Lott, “Brothers.”

Rebecca McClanahan, “Good-bye to All This.”

John McPhee, “The Search for Marvin Gardens.”

Michele Morano, “The Queimada.”

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Three Pokes of a Thistle.”
 
*Susan Orlean, "Lifelike."

Brenda Petersen, “Animal Allies.”
 
Simone Poirier-Bures, "That Shining Place: Crete 1966."

Wendy Rawlings, “Virtually Romance: A Discourse on Love in the Information Age.”

Chet Raymo, “Celebrating Creation.”

Robert L. Root, Jr., “Knowing Where You've Been.”

Arthur Saltzman, “How to Play.”

Scott Russell Sanders, “Cloud Crossing.”

Reg Saner, “Pliny and the Mountain Mouse.”

Mimi Schwartz, “My Father Always Said.”
 
*Floyd Skoot, "Fittings."

Michael Steinberg, “Chin Music.”

Susan Allen Toth, “Going to the Movies.”
 
*Erika Vidal, "Undressing Victoria."

Christine White, “Reflection Rag: Uncle Joe, Roberto Clemente and I.”
 

II. Talking About Creative Nonfiction.

 

Jocelyn Bartkevicius, “The Landscape of Nonfiction.”

Mary Clearman Blew, “The Art of Memoir.”

Annie Dillard, “To Fashion a Text.”

Patricia Foster, “The Intelligent Heart.”
 
*Vivian Gornick, "A Narrator Leaps Past Journalism."

Patricia Hampl, “Memory and Imagination.”
 
Steven Harvey, “The Art of Translation.”

Tracy Kidder, “Courting the Approval of the Dead.”

Phillip Lopate, “What Happened to the Personal Essay?”

Bret Lott, “Toward a Definition of Creative Nonfiction.”

Michael Pearson, “The Other Creative Writing.”

Robert L. Root, Jr., “Collage, Montage, Mosaic, Vignette, Episode, Segment.”

Scott Russell Sanders, “The Singular First Person.”

Mimi Schwartz, “Memoir? Fiction? Where's The Line?”

*Natalia Rachel Singer, "Nonfiction in First Person, Without Apology?"

Michael Steinberg, “Finding the Inner Story in Memoirs and Personal Essays.”

Marianna Torgovnick, “Experimental Critical Writing.”

 

 

III. Composing Creative Nonfiction.

 

Emily Chase, “Warping Time with Montaigne.”

Emily Chase, “Notes from a Journey toward ‘Warping Time’.”

Mary Elizabeth Pope, “Teacher Training.”

Mary Elizabeth Pope, “Composing ‘Teacher Training’.”

Maureen Stanton, “Zion.”

Maureen Stanton, “On Writing ‘Zion’.”

 


Alternative Table of Contents: Approaches to Writing and Discussing Creative Nonfiction

Notes on Authors.

Index.

Credits.

  • Exam Copy, 4/E
    Root & Steinberg
    © 2007 | Longman | Paper; 528 pages | Instock
    ISBN-10: 0321434889 | ISBN-13: 9780321434883


  • Instructor's Manual, 4/E
    Root & Steinberg
    © 2007 | Longman | Paper; 112 pages | Instock
    ISBN-10: 032144521X | ISBN-13: 9780321445216

    Instructor's Manual, 4/E
    Root & Steinberg
    © 2007 | Longman | Paper;112 pages | Instock
    ISBN-10: 032144521X | ISBN-13: 9780321445216

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    • PDF Version (pdf) (1.7MB | pdf file | Type: Manuals/Guides)


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