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The Art of Revision: The Last Word by Peter Ho Davies

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 175 pgs.
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The Art of Revision: The Last Word by Peter Ho Davies examines revision holistically through examples from published literature and revised stories over time from writers like Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish, Frank O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, and others, as well as a look at popular cinema, such as Terminator, and its revisions.

The crux of this craft book is: “The truth is that while our own ability to make new stories, and remake old ones, ends with us, life continues to revise us. Life in some sense is revision, and revision a measure of how alive a story continues to be. (pg. 171) Throughout, Davies examines his own work on The Welsh Girl and a story from his own past in which his father intervenes to save a Sikh boy from being beaten.

While this reference book is focused on short stories and novels, it’s takeaways regarding revision and our “darlings” can be applied to poetry. “Revision is very much a process of close reading ourselves and our work,” he says. (pg. 14) In a way it is not about the cutting or the reduction of the text all of the time, but the expansion and contraction of text to find the meat of the story and the truth of it. “I suspect a guiding principle of early drafts might be better phrased as ‘Write to know,‘ and of revision, ‘Revise to know more,” and of a final draft, ‘I’ve written what I now know.'” (pg. 36)

I’ve always loved the possibility of revision, but I’ve also cut poems down into enigmas and missed the points the poems were making entirely. I’ve played with words, phrasing, line breaks, and more to a point where the poem is even confused about itself. This book has helped me see that revision needs to be a little more focused, not targeted, but shining a light on the meaning/truth of the poem.

The Art of Revision: The Last Word by Peter Ho Davies is a nonfiction craft book I would highly recommend for poets, short story writers, novelists, and others. Davies is frank in his advice and his own limitations, but he also demonstrates that revision is a skill that can be learned, enjoyed, and even provide us with our own truth about ourselves and the stories that we are drawn to and must write on the page.

***Thanks to Melanie Figg for the recommendation.***

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

Peter Ho Davies‘s most recent books are the novel A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, long-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and The Art of Revision: The Last Word, his first work of non-fiction. His previous novel, The Fortunes, a New York Times Notable Book, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, a London Times Best Seller, was long-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also published two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and the Oregon Book Award) and Equal Love (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book).

Davies’ work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post and TLS among others, and been anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its “Best of Young British Novelists.”

Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts and a winner of the PEN/Malamud and PEN/Macmillan Awards.

Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, he now makes his home in the US. He has taught at the University of Oregon, Northwestern and Emory University, and is currently on faculty at the University of Michigan.

Mailbox Monday #704

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Thank you to Velvet for stepping in when Mailbox Monday needed another host.

Emma, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s What I Received:

The Art of Revision: The Last Word by Peter Ho Davies, which I purchased on recommendation from Melanie Figg.

In The Art of Revision: The Last Word, Peter Ho Davies takes up an often discussed yet frequently misunderstood subject. He begins by addressing the invisibility of revision―even though it’s an essential part of the writing process, readers typically only see a final draft, leaving the practice shrouded in mystery. To combat this, Davies pulls examples from his novels The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes, as well as from the work of other writers, including Flannery O’Connor, Carmen Machado, and Raymond Carver, shedding light on this slippery subject.

Davies also looks beyond literature to work that has been adapted or rewritten, such as books made into films, stories rewritten by another author, and the practice of retconning in comics and film. In an affecting frame story, Davies recounts the story of a violent encounter in his youth, which he then retells over the years, culminating in a final telling at the funeral of his father. In this way, the book arrives at an exhilarating mode of thinking about revision―that it is the writer who must change, as well as the writing. The result is a book that is as useful as it is moving, one that asks writers to reflect upon themselves and their writing.

Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea from Kellogg’s Feeding Reading Program.

It’s the start of a new year at Snow Hill School, and seven students find themselves thrown together in Mr. Terupt’s fifth grade class. There’s . . . Jessica, the new girl, smart and perceptive, who’s having a hard time fitting in; Alexia, a bully, your friend one second, your enemy the next; Peter, class prankster and troublemaker; Luke, the brain; Danielle, who never stands up for herself; shy Anna, whose home situation makes her an outcast; and Jeffrey, who hates school.

They don’t have much in common, and they’ve never gotten along. Not until a certain new teacher arrives and helps them to find strength inside themselves—and in each other. But when Mr. Terupt suffers a terrible accident, will his students be able to remember the lessons he taught them? Or will their lives go back to the way they were before—before fifth grade and before Mr. Terupt?

Find out what happens in sixth and seventh grades in Mr. Terupt Falls Again and Saving Mr. Terupt. And don’t miss the conclusion to the series, Goodbye, Mr. Terupt, coming soon!

Sway by Tricia Johnson for review.

Poems that welcome and embrace Mother Nature’s seasonal wind blown mysteries.

This book of poetry invites you to pause, kneel down in a meadow and experience the flora and fauna of Pennsylvania. To live among the rolling hills and valleys, as nature’s changing rhythms keep the time.

In Sway by Tricia Johnson, we imagine ourselves in the wilds of Nature with our heads resting on the back of our arms, eyes wide, observing the Living World.

The Wehrwolf by Alma Katsu, purchased.

Germany, 1945. In the waning days of World War II, the Nazis have been all but defeated. Uwe Fuchs, never a fighter, feels fortunate to have avoided the front lines as he cared for his widowed mother.

But Uwe’s fortune changes when Hans Sauer, the village bully, recruits him to join a guerilla resistance unit preparing for the arrival of Allied soldiers. At first, Uwe is wary. The war is lost, and rumor has it that Hans is a deserter. But Hans entices him with talk of power, brutality, and their village’s ancestral lore: werewolves.

With some reluctance, Uwe joins up with the pack and soon witnesses their startling transformation. But when the men’s violent rampage against enemy soldiers takes a devastatingly personal turn, Uwe must grapple not only with his role in their evil acts but with his own humanity. Can he reclaim what this group of predatory men has stolen from him?

Or has he been a monster all along?

What did you receive?