The (Diblos) Notebook - Softcover

Merrill, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564780643 ISBN 13: 9781564780645

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994

Synopsis

Best known as a poet, James Merrill is also an accomplished novelist, and in The (Diblos) Notebook artfully lays bare the process of writing a novel. A young American writer keeps a notebook that records at one and the same time a series of events on the Greek island of Diblos in which he is deeply involved, and his attempts to transform these events into a novel. Everything that might be found in such a notebook is used here with great cunning: the false starts that end in the middle of a thought; the endless revisions, canceled out in the search for the right word or phrase; the many approaches and backtrackings as the writer seeks an entrance to the materials through several possible doors; the musings on how the material is to be treated; and the wrestlings with the problem of appearance and assumed reality. The author has written an afterword for this new edition of his 1965 novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1564780643
• ISBN 13: 9781564780645
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160