The Erotics of Restraint

In his fourth book on writing, Glover draws on his long career as a fiction writer, essayist, and mentor to consider literary form from three angles: the techniques writers use to compose fiction, a craft-based approach to reading, and the analysis of texts by masters ranging from Jane Austen to Albert Camus to the great Polish experimentalist Witold Gombrowicz. Equal parts writing instruction and literary criticism, many of these essays evolved from lectures delivered at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program, while others embark on a new kind of literary criticism, at once both formalist and empathetic, which shows how form and theme are woven together to create art. A practical and illuminating guide from the writer the Wall Street Journal calls "a master of narrative structure."