Writing and life

Erudite, inspirational, and concise, Michael Lydon offers a celebration of the craft of writing that will serve as a guidebook for aspiring writers and avid readers. A musician and former Newsweek reporter who was a founding editor of Rolling Stone, Lydon calls writing "a visible word music, more like singing than drawing," and indeed his own prose rings with a rhythm and lyricism that exemplifies his view. With enthusiasm and great warmth, he asks a question central to all writers and readers: "What makes writing good?" and for his answers he taps sources that range from the Bible to Raymond Chandler, Shakespeare to Nabokov, Dickens to the New York Times. What makes Lydon's study both remarkable and refreshing, however, is his conscious attempt to present an antidote to postmodern literary theory which tries to erase the presence of the author and negate the existence of an external reality. In contrast, Lydon describes in engaging, readable terms his own discovery that authors are very much alive and that reality is out there to be captured in their writing.