In this engaging memoir, Southern Review editor and novelist Lott takes on the art of writing by focusing on creativity and guiding the writer to certain realities of the craft. In essays taken from his own life and experience, Lott explores why writers write, the importance of simple language in writing, character development, technique, and other finer points of the craft. He also draws from the knowledge and wisdom of such writers as E.B. White, Eudora Welty, and Henry James, to name a few, and talks about his own feelings on the success of his novel Jewel and his high regard for J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the art of writing and all libraries.-Loree Davis, Broward Cty. Main Lib., Fort Lauderdale, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Lott's fourth book, the novel Jewel (1991), was eight years old and out of print when Oprah chose it for her book club, thus radically altering his modest existence. Lott now looks back on his long struggle to get published in a stealthily affecting memoir. Writing with equal measures of humility and authority, Lott, who declares himself a follower of Christ, passionately elucidates his belief in literature as a profound undertaking that induces one to pay keen attention to life, seek meaning, and practice compassion. But oh, how very difficult a calling writing can be. Wanna-be writers will find Lott's account of his deliberately methodical approach to submitting stories to magazines, then logging in hundreds of rejections (talk about faith), morbidly fascinating. He also discusses the different challenges involved in writing fiction and creative nonfiction; dissects irony; and relates such ludicrous goings-on as the time he was able to sell a novel only by using a nom de plume. Lott reaches great emotional depths as he reflects on everything from literary technique to family life to matters of the spirit, and tracks the amazing convergences, munificent revelations, and good fortune that can be engendered by a life of artistic conviction, devotion, and good old stick-to-itiveness. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2004 Booklist

Lott was a little-known writer of literary fiction until Oprah Winfrey selected his then out-of-print novel Jewel for her TV book club, rocketing him into publishing's major leagues. In this candid memoir and literary handbook, Lott looks back to the hard times before Oprah, when he was forced to juggle raising a young family with a demanding teaching job that left him little time for writing. Recently named editor of the Southern Review, Lott offers via his reminiscences plenty of practical advice on the craft of writing, which for him is intricately bound up with observation and soulfulness. His hero is Raymond Carver, and his literary values echo those of the master; he urges writers to attend to the weight of every word, to the material reality of characters' daily working lives and to the handling of time. Beginning writers will appreciate the heartfelt supportiveness of his counsel as he imparts encouragement and insight. Of wider cultural interest is Lott's critique of the irony hawked by such writers as David Foster Wallace and of the so-called postironic Dave Eggers. Lott advances a case for a new and radically more hopeful genre of fiction. He imparts his own brand of wisdom on writing and the world of publishing with resounding candor and sincerity. (Jan. 25) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved