A primer on writing from a gifted novelist

Charles Johnson, one of America’s finest novelists (Middle Passage) and foremost thinkers pondering the cosmos of literature, has published a road map to that cosmos as complex, daunting and rewarding as the destination itself. Titled The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling (Scribner, 256 pp., *** out of four stars), this dense little book could just as cogently be called The Rigors of Writing Seriously.

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