Overview

""This is a gorgeous book, one that will inspire anyone to make the next sentence.""-Jericho Brown, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 2020 Roger Rosenblatt has always been ""mad about the writing life."" In this new collection, he shares the stories and insights about writing that have inspired him, as a journalist, a columnist for The Washington Post, an essayist for Time magazine and The New Republic, and then as the author of best-selling books like Making Toast, Rules for Aging, Kayak Morning, and Unless It Moves the Human Heart. The new and beloved pieces in The Story I Am: Mad About the Writing Life, drawn from his vast body of work, celebrate the art, the craft, and the soul of writing. Here are essays and excerpts on the rewards and punishments of the life of a writer, along with thoughts on how to write, what to write, and why writing lies at the heart of human hope and experience. Reviewing Rosenblatt's memoir The Boy Detective in the New York Times Book Review, Pete Hamill said Rosenblatt ""writes the way a great jazz musician plays, moving from one emotion to another."" For Rosenblatt, writing, like jazz, is the art of improvisation. Rosenblatt writes that ""Writing makes justice desirable, evil intelligible, grief endurable, and love possible."" In a nutshell, it's worth a life.

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9781885983824

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Reviews

Roger Rosenblatt is the master of transmitting soul and substance into the novels, short stories, plays, essays, journalism, commentaries, monologues, lectures, scripts, and scraps--in fact, into all that he creates. We bless him and thank him for that, but also for his willingness to explain how and why he does it--must do it, really. The result is this joyful collection of ever-so-well-written glimpses into what it's like to treasure the written word as a way of life and living. --Jim Lehrer Roger Rosenblatt is a writer's writer--essays, humor, fiction, poignant family pieces, letters. He can do it all, and here he shares his insights and tips for a new generation. This book should be in every classroom. --Tom Brokaw As entertaining as it is useful, The Story I Am features the qualities one prizes in a book by Roger Rosenblatt: the insider knowledge, the proof of experience, the illimitable wit and singular, necessary voice. --Amy Hempel A prolific writer reflects on his commitment to his craft [in this] warmhearted testimony of gratitude and humility --Kirkus Reviews The Story I Am [takes] us into the mind of the writer, with some of the most beautiful lyric moments in this contemporary moment. Rosenblatt makes plain the life of the writer as human as any other life: that of a grandfather, a friend. This is a gorgeous book, one that will inspire anyone to make the next sentence. --Jericho Brown By turns funny, acerbic, and wistful, this collection will provide Rosenblatt's many fans with much to delight them. --Publishers Weekly

"""The Story I Am makes a journey for us into the mind of the writer, with some of the most beautiful lyric prose in this contemporary moment. Rosenblatt makes plain the life of the writer as human as any other life: that of a grandfather, a friend. This is a gorgeous book, one that will inspire anyone to make the next sentence.""--Jericho Brown, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 2020 ""A prolific writer reflects on his commitment to his craft [in this] warmhearted testimony of gratitude and humility""--Kirkus Reviews ""As entertaining as it is useful, The Story I Am features the qualities one prizes in a book by Roger Rosenblatt: the insider knowledge, the proof of experience, the illimitable wit and singular, necessary voice."" --Amy Hempel ""By turns funny, acerbic, and wistful, this collection will provide Rosenblatt's many fans with much to delight them.""--Publishers Weekly ""Roger Rosenblatt is a writer's writer--essays, humor, fiction, poignant family pieces, letters. He can do it all, and here he shares his insights and tips for a new generation. This book should be in every classroom.""--Tom Brokaw ""Roger Rosenblatt is the master of transmitting soul and substance into the novels, short stories, plays, essays, journalism, commentaries, monologues, lectures, scripts, and scraps--in fact, into all that he creates. We bless him and thank him for that, but also for his willingness to explain how and why he does it--must do it, really. The result is this joyful collection of ever-so-well-written glimpses into what it's like to treasure the written word as a way of life and living.""--Jim Lehrer"

Author Information

Roger Rosenblatt is the author of five New York Times Notable Books of the Year, four national bestsellers, and seven off-Broadway plays. His essays for Time magazine and the PBS NewsHour have won two George Polk Awards, the Peabody, and the Emmy, among others. In 2015, he won the Kenyon Review Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. He held the Briggs-Copeland appointment in the teaching of writing at Harvard. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at SUNY Stony Brook/Southampton.

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