Novels about novels

Poppy78

I recently read Italo Calvino's 'If on a Winters Night a Traveller' and found it basically to be a book about the process of novel writing.

This got me thinking about other books (fiction) that the writer uses their knowledge and emotions about their craft as the central theme or plot of their book.

The only one I came up with so far is Misery by Stephen King, which shows a distorted account of the relationship between reader and writer.

Can anyone think of any other interesting ones. Fiction only as I am sure there are thousands of non-fiction books on the art of writing.

claire h

Claire Kilroy's latest, All Names Have Been Changed, is about creative writing (and group dynamics within a writing group).

There's a book called Nell's Novel by some (I'm almost 100% sure) Irish writer in which the heroine is writing two novels, one Serious Intellectual Deep one and one fun historical romance.

I would highly recommend Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys.

Trying to think of others... I think there's probably another Stephen King one that features a writer, if not more.

hatful

Books about Books:

http://inkwellbookstore.blogspot.com/2009/05/booksellers-pick-their-favorite-books.html -A list

Books about the writing process:

"What I talk about when I talk about running" Haruki Murakami

The Book within a Book:

"The Master and Margarita" Mikhail Bulgakov

"The Man in the High Castle" Philip K. Dick

994

jm coetzee's "foe"

Valmont

Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire might interest you.

eclectichoney

Paul Auster's Book of Illusions probably counts

Fr Clint Power

'Any Human Heart' by William Boyd might interest you too.

DTrotter

I think The Affirmation by Christopher Priest might fall into this category. Very god book.

oxygen_old

Cloud Atlas is one of these. Its layered really well. Each story breaks in the middle, and the main character of the next story is reading/watching/listening to the previous characters story. It means each story is fiction in fiction, so by the last story, your 5 times removed from reality. Also all the storys are linear in time, so you start in a pre Columbus ship, and end in a post apocolyptic future.

Dades

claire h wrote: »

Trying to think of others... I think there's probably another Stephen King one that features a writer, if not more.

The Dark Half was another one.

i71jskz5xu42pb

Sort of -

• The Information, Martin Amis - it sucks being a serious author it would seem
• Cloud Atlas - A books with books in books ....
• The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov - 2 books, one about the guy who writes the second which drives him mad

Ho-Hum

As someone mentioned above Master & the Margarita and The man in the high Castle are well worth the read.

i71jskz5xu42pb

The Surgeon of Crowthorne - Simon Winchester, also a great book, tells the story of the creation of the first OED.

Sammy Jennings

The Counterlife by Philip Roth, although be warned: for it to cohere you'd need to be somewhat familiar with Roth's earlier books.

Shryke

At Swim Two Birds?

silvine

Stephen King 'On Writing'

Sandra Newman and Howard Mittlemark 'How not to write a novel'

Some good recommendations in this thread but I found Cloud Atlas difficult, underwhelming and not that clever.

gaf1983

Sandor wrote: »

At Swim Two Birds?

Most definitely.

"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon could fall into the category as long as we count comic books as novels.

"The Ghost" by Robert Harris, though this is really about the process of writing a biography as opposed to a novel.

Regarding other forms of media, I know that Brian the Dog has been struggling through the writing process to come up with his great novel over the course of a good few seasons in Family Guy.

Shryke

I've read Kavalier and Clay but I wouldn't have thought of it. Good call.

WinstonSmith

Whilst many may undoubtedly disagree with this, but for me, 'At Swim Two Birds' is in a class of its own in this description. (By Flann O'Brien/Myles Na gCoppaleen/Brian O'Nolan etc...)

randomguy

Some good ones there.

I'd add Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assasin.