"It seems painfully obvious to note that novels are composed one word at a time. Yet very few works of literary theory or criticism explore how words actually work in a literary context, how (some) writers effectively employ and deploy words (and the syllables that comprise them) to achieve stylistic effects that can heighten, distract from, make memorable, enliven, or deepen the experience of reading. Distinct from plot, theme, or character, the ways of the word are multiple, deviant, and convergent by turns, and in this book, Garrett Stewart charts some of these ways across dozens of works by authors classic to contemporary, in poetry as well as prose."--
In The Ways of the Word, Garrett Stewart steps aside from theory to focus on the sheer pleasure of attentive reading and the excitement of recognizing the play of syllables and words upon which the best literary writing is founded. Emerging out of teaching creative writing and a broader effort to convene writers and critics, Stewart's "episodes in verbal attention" track the means to meaning through the byways of literary wording.
Through close engagement with literary passages and poetic instances whose imaginative demands are their own reward, Stewart gathers exhibits from dozens of authors: from Dickinson, Dickens, and DeLillo to Whitman, Woolf, and Colson Whitehead. In the process, idiom, tense, etymology, and other elements of expressive language and its phonetic wordplay are estranged and heard anew. The Ways of the Word fluidly and intuitively reveals a verbal alchemy that is as riveting as it is elusive and mysterious.
