Novels about/concerning writers or the act of writing

[Desolation]

Ever since I started college, it's been very difficult to find inspiration to either read or write, and I was thinking that an ideal way to kill two birds with one stone would be to get together a group of books to read in which the act of writing plays a major part in the novel (along with other philosophical or psychological elements and themes). That way I am reading, and hopefully the reading will give me inspiration to write. So far, I have listed the following books, with all but the first two being re-reads:
The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Ask the Dust by John Fante
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am looking for recommendations of other books in the same vein, preferably first person narratives in which the author/protagonist makes a point in expressing their desires and struggles to write or be a writer. So, what, in your generally expert opinions, are the best books about writers?

[Barbarous]

The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Pale Fire by Vladimir
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

[sixsmith]

The Zuckerman Novels - Philip Roth
Elizabeth Costello - JM Coetzee
The Information - Martin Amis
Mao II - Don DeLillo

[Dinkleberry2010]

The best book I have read by a writer writing about his own work is The Story Of A Novel by Thomas Wolfe. Another good work by a writer about his own work is On Writing by Stephen King.

[mal4mac]

The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
...
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

I agree! (The others I haven't read, or not recently enough to comment.) Montaigne's Essays are a must. Hamlet is also useful here, with the 'play within a play' section.

[Scheherazade]

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles.

[dfloyd]

perhaps the draft should be reinsituted. If you are faced with enthusiasm about college or going to Afghanistan, you might become more entusiastic about doing well in college.

[Brad Coelho]

Hemingway's memoirs (Moveable Feast) touch on this subject, in addition to his right jabs and left hooks at the competition ;)

[Desolation]

perhaps the draft should be reinsituted. If you are faced with enthusiasm about college or going to Afghanistan, you might become more entusiastic about doing well in college.I never said anything about not being excited about college...My problem is that I'm having a hard time enjoying life outside of college. Not that I do anything fun or interesting in college, or have any friends, I'm just having a hard time getting enthused about my personal reading.

Also, thank you, everyone, for your suggestions. I'm going to start looking into the books mentioned.

[JackieGinger]

I don't know whether you can find this in English, but Paul Zarifolpol's In Favour of Literary Art is excellent. I'm reading it just now, and it's ... can't find my words to express how great it is

[kelby_lake]

Pale Fire
The Habit of Art (it's a play but still...)
Shakespeare's sonnets :)

[neilgee]

Kafka's diaries:

It is [to describe it figuratively] as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole composition. It is then as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author , out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say "No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer".

Isn't most writing about writing pretty tortous stuff?

Get out of here with the sonnets, kelby lake:lol:

[pleaseprufrock]

I find that the most inspiration novels aren't the ones where the writers are the protagonist but the writing itself is the actual inspiration. Most of the time prose seems to act as a far better "writing stimulant" than the actual plot.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
Darkmans by Nicola Barker

Or even try poetry like Eliot, Stevens, or Yeats.

Hope this helps!

[keilj]

Humiliated and Insulted by Dostoevsky

Garden of Eden by Hemingway

both really good books

[kelby_lake]

If On A Winter's Night A traveller...

[Kinbote]

Pale Fire by Nabokov
In Search of Lost Time by Proust

[janesmith]

"New Grub Street" - George Gissing

[blazeofglory]

Trying James Joyce is a good start and of course if one can comprehend little will be left there to understand. That will prove one's maturity. He is such a mature writer.l have yet to be mature to understand his Ulysses and the moment I can understand the book from start to finish I will feel I have no more to learn and embellish my skill of writing and I will commence writing after that and I believe I will give something to my reader worthy of reading. Now all I have to give is my gibberish or muddled ideas and that will simply befuddle the reader.

Derrida, the deconstructionist has rightly chosen only James Joyce out of many many books he saw on book shelves, as he mentioned it in his writing, for we have little time to read all and most are simply rubbish.


Of course when it comes to writing, it is totally to focus on the reader, for we write mainly for our readers and that is why today writing is reader centric or market oriented. If your book does not sell, that means if your reader does not take a liking to your book, it is deemed worthless in essence.

[Kevets]

Paul Auster does this recursively in A Man in the Dark

[hellsapoppin]

"I Remember Mama" by Kathryn Forbes which was adapted to stage and screen - in it the girl wants to be a professional writer. Her mom boldly enlists the help of a famous writer and inspires her child to excel.

http://www.amazon.com/I-Remember-Mama-Irene-Dunne/dp/B0004Z322O

[k.brignell]

My Secret History - Paul Theroux

[blp]

Desolation, novels about writers and writing I've always found to be extraordinarily dull, with the possible exception of Sartre's Nausea, which is only really revealed to be a book about writing at the end. But as a subject for a novel, writing doesn't generally seem to offer much.

Coincidentally, I was also hugely inspired by The Prime of Life, the second volume of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography, a lot of which is simply devoted to itemising which books she was reading at what times.

[blp]

Just seen JaneSmith's recommendation. I take it back. That one's really worth reading.

[kelby_lake]

Would you be averse to plays? The Habit of Art is about writing/creating.

[WuWei]

Definitely Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu" (which is, by the way, an absolute must-read if you enjoyed the ending of Sartre's "Nausea", which is deeply linked to it).

Also, André Gide's "The Counterfeiters", one of the most accomplished meta-literary novels of the last century.

Hoffmannsthal's "The Letter of Lord Chandos" (which can be read in an hour) is very interesting.

[Jozanny]

The form is difficult to engage without becoming droll. John Irving succeeds in The World According To Garp, and fails with the same meta comedy style in A Widow For One Year.

I do not really see Proust as a meta writer in the tradition of Sterne. He discusses writers and literary aesthetics true, but I do not feel he is self-consciously outside of his creation of his own character in his masterpiece.

An argument can be made that Patricia Highsmith does something interesting with the technique in Tremor of A Forgery.

[pooteeweet]

Sophie's Choice

[johnw1]

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith features a family where the father has writer's block and just reads detective stories in his office in the castle.

Leaf by Niggle by Tolkein is a short story about a painter working in obsessive detail on every leaf in a massive painting which never seems to progress. Seen as an allegory of Tolkein's own process of writing.

[WuWei]

I do not really see Proust as a meta writer in the tradition of Sterne. He discusses writers and literary aesthetics true, but I do not feel he is self-consciously outside of his creation of his own character in his masterpiece.


Well, the thematical developement and overall structure of the "Recherche" all tend to the newly-found awareness which is eventually gained in the last book. That very awareness allows the narrator to feel at peace with his literary vocation and, finally, to start writing (which, as Rousset pointed out, sends the reader back to the beginning of the masterpiece, in a circular structure in which the ending begets the incipit).

[Mariner]

"How I Became a Famous Novelist" by Steve Hely.

Funny, witty and awesome. It's a definite guidebook to modern literature and the writing culture. I recommend.