Literary style
Reading fiction line by line
I went to my local bookstore last week and asked for a recommendation. I said I wanted style and ideas above all else. One of the young women at the register suggested Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick. I’d heard of it but never tried—and I’ve been highlighting ever since.
(One upside to insomnia, it leaves a lot of time for reading.)
True, with the weak something is always happening: improvisation, surprise, suspense, injustice, manipulation, hypochondria, secret drinking, jealousy, lying, crying, hiding in the garden, driving off in the middle of the night. The weak have the purest sense of history. Anything can happen. Each one of them is a palmist, reading his own hand. Yes, I will either have a long or a short life; he (she) will be either blond or dark-haired.
In my forties, reading fiction, I’ve wound up in an odd spot where I mostly read for style. Maybe not even mostly—and it’s a change I didn’t see coming. (What’s next, military biographies?)
But for some reason right now, during the last couple years, I’ve noticed I’m resolutely less attracted to plotting. And maybe it’s that being a regularly-writing writer for 30 years makes me more apt to notice what I deem mistakes, or that I have an extremely low tolerance for exposition and easy twists. Still, what might it mean?
Reading for style for me suggests getting hooked on voice. I want a sentence to be self-interested, not purple but nihilistic, before it serves the plot or even the paragraph. Noticing an author’s choices, watching a mind at work inside the text—I’ve gotten to an extreme point where sometimes I pick up a novel at any page.
I like fragments; I like space between fragments. Basically, I want to be put to work, interpretatively. I don’t know the last time I read a book where the story was the thing that interested me most.
It is not true that it doesn’t matter where you live, that you are in Hartford or Dallas merely yourself. Also it is not true that all are linked naturally to their regions.
Reaching midlife, maybe I need something different from fiction. I’d be interested to hear how other people’s reading habits have changed. In my late teens and twenties it felt important to consume the canon, then the moderns, then contemporary. Thirties, I was all over the place, a lot of author deep-dives, or works my education missed. Today, in my forties, I’m more impatient, I’ve also got a lot less patience for aggravating characters; line by line, Martyr! was beautiful, but after a hundred pages, I tossed it across the room.
(Hurling books you don’t like is really fun. I once threw White Teeth out a window.)
I do kinda miss the hook-and-catch of intense engagement—I remember how I gasped at the end of Persuasion, or raced to finish Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai. But yeah, give me sensibility, juxtaposition, weird ideas. If I want plot, there’s always television. From books, I want so much more.
𓀠 Tomorrow’s 3+ things for premium subscribers:
How I use different artificial intelligence models in my work
Great music from 2026 that I’ve already overlooked
Online reads to soothe the doom-scroll
If you haven’t yet, level up for just $6 per month and enjoy Sunday’s three-plus things each week: new music, great books, shopping picks, cool stuff generally.
❀ Hey, if you’re a writer looking for help—editing, coaching, brainstorm juju—I recommend collaborating with Rachel Knowles.
Rachel has helped me significantly over the years, not to mention lots of other writers: novelists, screenwriters, Substack-ers, the gamut. Whether you’re aspiring or established, everyone needs an editor. More info at her website.
What the what
“Meditations in an Emergency” is a weekly essay from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus things to love, plus a monthly travel-lust ballyhoo.
Rosecrans is a correspondent for GQ, a contributor at Travel + Leisure, and the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
For magazine articles, bio, contact info: rosecransbaldwin.com.
Disclaimer: if you buy something using a link from here, I may receive a commission.