Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 7 Number 2, August 2006
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Tomlinson, Barbara. Authors on Writing: Metaphors and Intellectual Labor. Hampshire, GB, and New York, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 248 pp., ISBN-140394895X (HBk), £45.00.
Reviewed
by
Utah State University
In her new book, Authors on Writing: Metaphors and Intellectual Labor, Barbara Tomlinson proposes “new ways of exploring a very old topic—the activities of writing and what authors have to say about them” (1). She draws on about 3000 published interviews conducted with contemporary authors and centers her investigation on how the two faces of writing are intertwined: as an individual activity and as a collective social practice. She chooses interviews for their specific interpersonal and impromptu flavor, as well as because interviews are a unique way of connecting and communicating a solitary activity to a live audience, i.e. the interviewer.
For the larger part of her text, Tomlinson focuses on the metaphoric approach writers create and reveal about their own writing and writing processes prompting her argument with Matthew Arnold’s poem “The Buried Life of the Mind” which she also appropriates as a metanarrative for composing. She insists that critically and creatively reading each others’ writing can be best done by metaphorical analysis as a critical method. In the chapter, “Metaphorics of Embodied Labor,” she describes the many kinds of labor that go into composing—suggesting the scent of real sweat behind the creative process—though the process is much less glamorous than the final product. Moreover, Tomlinson contends, as part of the writing process, writers necessarily engage in a dialogue with their own words, their characters, and themselves—which she discusses in her chapter, “Metaphorics of Discursive Sociality.” In the same chapter, the author gives an overview of the ongoing polemic amongst writers on how characters come to life, in other words, whether characters can or can not dictate their own stories. Fascinating as it is to read these confessions, there is no surprise ending to this debate—authors will continue to grapple with character creation as long as there will be storytelling.
Finally, Tomlinson discusses two aspects of authorship expressed in the interviews: as “intellectual labor” and what challenges it faces “in an economy of promotion.”
Perhaps the highlight of this book is Chapter 8, “Writing in Earthquake Country,” in which Tomlinson—tongue deeply embedded in cheek—reflects on her own writing processes enlivened by her own metaphoric images. Her writing style, highly academic elsewhere, suddenly and comfortingly lightens up and she places herself within her own context on the arduous labors plaguing all writers. I am grateful for that chapter.
I am at a loss how to classify this book to propose a possible audience; on the one hand it reads as a highly structured, academic, and information-laden monography with a persuasive thrust, on the other it functions as a reference book with extensive notes comprising practically half of the tome. I know I will treasure the thorough and systematic classifications of metaphors on the many aspects of the writing process and plan to delight my writing students with them. I also enjoy having at hand such a vast collection of authorial views on the craft of writing, especially from writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Edward Albee, Peter Elbow, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O’Connor, and Donald M. Murray.