Description
Book SynopsisA writing manual as well as a manifesto, Every Day I Write the Book combines Amitava Kumar's practical writing advice with interviews with prominent writers, offering guidance and inspiration for academic writers at all levels.
Trade Review“
Every Day I Write the Book is a persuasive instance of the sort of rare nonfiction performance Amitava Kumar invokes within its pages; he at once defines and exemplifies a vital modern nonfiction tradition. Full of pragmatic analyses and recommendations, this enthralling, important book will prove to be compelling and useful across many audiences.” -- Robert Polito
“Amitava Kumar's
Every Day I Write the Book compels a cluster of adjectives—eclectic, ruminative, associative, probing, and personal—all of which, taken together, only begin to describe this unique writing sensibility. Turning the pages we find ourselves riding shotgun through the reading and writing life of a true cosmopolitan intellectual. Kumar instructs and inspires, running on all cylinders.” -- Sven Birkerts
"A guide for academic writers that is also relevant to anyone who cares about fine prose. . . . An engaging, perceptive companion for all writers." * Kirkus Reviews *
"An inventive essay collection . . . a celebration of 'the value, the ease, and also the excitement of crafting writing that hasn’t been produced to please a committee.' Grad students and tenure seekers will appreciate the support Kumar’s insightful and intellectually nimble book offers, even as they buckle down to the task at hand—satisfying that committee of readers." * Publishers Weekly *
"Too often lively writing is taken as a sign of dilettantism. Things don’t have to be this way, and Kumar, who is himself both a critic and a novelist, insists that scholarship should argue and inform but also surprise and delight. . . . The best way to argue that academic books can be formally inventive is to write a formally inventive academic book. That’s what Kumar does here." -- Anthony Domestico * Commonweal *
"Kumar’s writing guide/commonplace book is a salve. Reading his newest is like having office hours—no, better; a drink and bookish conversation, in a bar—with your smartest, kindest teacher, or friend." -- John Francisconi * Grandlife *
"Kumar sets out to do for the academic writer what writers like Annie Dillard, Ursula Le Guin, Anne Lamott, and Stephen King do for the creative writer in their accounts of their own writing lives. . . . This book will interest scholars in search of alternative models for presenting their ideas and those seeking insight into an academic’s writing life. Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty." -- A. M. Laflen * Choice *
"An entertaining ramble through his years of analyzing his own writing process and that of many, many other authors. . . . The most amazing feature of this book is the sheer number of authors and ideas on writing that are collected in what Kumar calls, 'The 90-Day Book.'" -- Gretchen Webster * Publishing Research Quarterly *
"Kumar’s work effuses creative associations. Ostensibly a how-to writing guide for scholars, this book is from a different mould, one aligned with the daring and the bold: that is, with the creative. . . . In
Every Day I Write the Book, you see a writer and thinker in communion with other writers and thinkers: that is, in communion with the world of ideas." -- Steven E. Gumb * Journal of Scholarly Publishing *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. The 90-Day Book 1
Part I. Self-Help
Misery 5
Good Sentences 6
Read No Secondary Literature 7
Read Junk 9
Failure 10
Running 12
Sleep 15
Kitchen Timer 16
Self-Help 17
Part II. Writing a Book: A Brief History
Rules of Writing 23
In Memory of 24
Out of Place 26
Eyes on the Ground 28
The End of the Line 30
Creative Criticism 31
How to Throw Your Body 36
I'm Feeling Myself 38
Creative Writing 39
Part III. Credos
Declarations of Independence 47
In Praise of Nonfiction 54
There Is No Single Way 56
How Proust Can Ruin Your Life 57
Reality Hunger 58
Depend on Your Dumbness 60
Blackness (Unmitigated) 62
Rage on the Page 63
On Training 68
Part IV. Form
Light Years 71
Neither/Nor 72
Criticism by Other Means 75
Paranoid Theory 77
Erotic Style 80
I Blame the Topic Sentence 82
The Sound of the Fury 83
In Defense of the Fragment 86
Kids 88
Part V. Academic Interest
Diana Studies 91
Examined Life 95
Occupy Writing 96
Academic Sentence 98
Dissertation Blah 100
Your Job Is to Know a Lot 102
Terminology 103
Anti-Anti Jargon 104
Monograph 107
Part VI. Style
But Life 111
Sugared Violets 112
Voice 113
Wikileaks Manual of Style 117
Detecting Style 118
Strunk and White 120
A Clean English Sentence 122
Trade 126
Recommendation Letter 128
Part VII. Exercises
Bad Writing 137
Prompt 139
Post-Its 141
Revising 142
Editing 144
Performing It 146
Rituals 149
For Graduate Students 152
Not Writing 161
Part VIII. The Groves of Academe
Academe 165
Stoner 167
Common Sense 169
Titles 170
Campus Criticism 172
Farther Away 176
Accountability 177
Tenure Files 179
Journals 182
Part IX. Materials
Photographs, etc. 187
"Who's Got the Address?" (a Collaboration with Teju Cole) 190
Acknowledgments 197
Appendix A. Ten Rules of Writing 201
Appendix B. PEN Ten Interview 207
Notes 211
Index 231
