THE SITUATION AND THE STORY: THE ART OF PERSONAL NARRATIVE (2008)

The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.'' Gornick's brief study of two nonfiction genres, the essay and the memoir, is a gem: lucid, lively, and full of observations both useful and true. Although the obvious audience for Gornick's wisdom are aspiring writers, she also spurs on readers to do their task more thoughtfully. Her remarks about the works of Joan Didion, Thomas De Quincey, and Edmund Gosse, among others, are instructive but never didactic. And her revelations about how writers have tackled the difficult task of presenting personal experience should only inspire writing as delightful as this volume.