Lopate, a consummate and piquant essayist and director of Columbia University’s graduate nonfiction program, draws on his extensive teaching experience in this expert, anecdotal, funny, and frank guide to writing “intelligent, satisfying, engaging literary nonfiction.” Even in a how-to book, Lopate can’t help but write lithe and sparring personal essays, so we learn, for example, that he honed his chops as a ghostwriter. His sophisticated advice touches on psychological challenges as much as craft, such as when he names “self-hatred” as a “stumbling block” for writers, and, admitting his own audacity when writing about family and friends, instructs memoirists to be prepared to “accept the guilt” when people get upset. He also suggests developing a “tone of assertion.” Lopate draws helpful comparisons with fiction, noting that nonfiction also requires conflict and the “art of characterization” but that its story line is a thought process. Never one to accept received wisdom, Lopate encourages writers to go beyond the safe, facile, and sentimental. To see him practice what he preaches, turn to his newest essay collection, Portraits inside My Head. --Donna Seaman
Review
“[To Show and To Tell] gives away all his trade secrets – a thoughtful guidebook for writers of literary nonfiction.” (New York Times Book Review)
“One of the best guides to writing nonfiction I've read.” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer)
“Sophisticated… Lopate, a consummate and piquant essayist,…draws on his extensive teaching experience in this expert, anecdotal, funny, and frank guide to writing “intelligent, satisfying, engaging literary nonfiction.” Even in a how-to book, Lopate can’t help but write lithe and sparring personal essays… Never one to accept received wisdom, Lopate encourages writers to go beyond the safe, facile, and sentimental.” (Booklist)
“One of the Earls of Essay returns with a collection that illustrates both his knowledge of the genre and his considerable skill in practicing it… A useful collection of bracing thoughts and sinuous sentences.” (Kirkus Reviews)
Praise for Phillip Lopate:
"Consistency charged with a feeling of discovery. A-" (Entertainment Weekly, for Getting Personal)
"Lopate is both legatee and guardian of the genre." (Publishers Weekly, for Getting Personal)
"Lopate's slightly ironic tone flavors an easygoing, good-humored, conversational style." (New York Times Book Review, for Getting Personal)
"A wonderfully observant, elegiac, and far-reaching historical meditation." (The New York Times, for Waterfront)
"The celebrated essayist takes a tour of the city’s ever-changing perimeter, sharing his knowledge of New York’s history, mythology, and plansfor the future. Poring over his informed, readable prose is like taking a stroll with a favorite professor: he is opinionated, casual, and erudite in equal measure." (Conde-Nast Traveler, for Waterfront)
"Part personal essay, part municipal history, part architectural guide, part criticism and part utopian musing... Waterfront makes excellent reading for all those who feel the romance of the city’s past and.... for those with an interest in the growing healthiness of the city’s waterways and in architecture and urban planning." (The New York Times Book Review, for Waterfront)
"Where less keen observers see only ugliness, Lopate discerns the raffish beauty that once was, the bright possibilities that might be." (Newsday, for Waterfront)
"[Lopate] writes like cream pouring from a jug. . . . Richly entertaining." (Kirkus Reviews (starred), for Waterfront)
"A native New Yorker, avid walker, and impeccable stylist... Lopate seamlessly blends witty and candid accounts of his ramblings along the bedraggled edge of this great metropolis to create a fascinating narrative that encompasses historical, literary, cultural, aesthetic, and environmental perspectives." (Booklist (starred), for Waterfront)
"Without a doubt, this is the most nourishing essay collection I've read in years." (Susan Burmeister-Brown Portland Oregonian, for The Art of the Personal Essay)
"A labor of deeply felt love and keenly honed scholarship by an essay authority who knows his territory down to his bones." (Christian Science Monitor, for The Art of the Personal Essay)
"The best available [essay anthology] no matter how crowded the field." (Chicago Tribune, for The Art of the Personal Essay)
"Packed with personality and beguiling first-person prose... of reminders of the perils and pleasures of the craft." (The Wall Street Journal, for The Art of the Personal Essay)
“At last--a reliable guide to the signature genre of the age. Phillip Lopate's tour of literary nonfiction includes brilliant and helpful considerations of the essay and memoir, placing them and their vexing questions in clear cultural context. Impossible now to imagine a nonfiction course that does not include To Show and To Tell in its syllabus. This is the rule book. But it's much more than a "craft book" for writers. It's a delight in itself, a fascinating exploration for readers, for anyone wondering why personally voiced nonfiction is so popular. The range is impressive, and the voice here is immediate, fresh, witty, winningly honest. An indispensible book.” (Patricia Hampl author of The Florist's Daughter)
“Shrewd, revealing, dexterous, skeptical, provocative, restless, wry, necessary.” (Laura Kipnis author of Against Love and How to Become a Scandal)
“The work of a master, To Show and To Tell is beyond compare, for it embodies a poetics of literary nonfiction that takes into account all the crucial aspects, elements, and issues of the craft. Thus it's the essential text for anyone who seeks to enjoy, to understand, or to write nonfiction.” (Carl H. Klaus author of The Made-Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay)
About the Author
Phillip Lopate is the author of more than a dozen books, including three personal essay collections, Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, and Waterfront. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a winner of fellowships from the New York Public Library, National Endowment for the Arts, and Guggenheim, he is a professor of graduate nonfiction writing at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with his wife.
