Book Review: Why Writing Matters

Why Writing Matters

by Nicholas Delbanco

Yale University Press

Nonfiction (Adult)

Pub Date 17 Mar 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Why Writing Matters. through Yale University Press and Netgalley:

Writing matters, but why does it matter?

Nicole’s Delbanco reminds us that “So somewhere in some distant place and time some someone made a mark on stone or wood or ice or clay or sand and somebody else understood it and the process of writing began.”

This book is the newest in Yale University Press Why X Matters series. Distinguished writer and scholar Nicholas Delbanco tackles important questions about the discipline of writing. Delbanco draws from his own experiences with mentors, John Updike, John Gardener, and James Baldwin. Delbanco in turn went on to teach such rising stars such as Jesmyn Ward. The author focuses on questions of influence and the contradiction that simultaneously moves us towards imitation, but also originality. A contradiction in itself.

Why Writing Matters is part memoir, part literary history, as well as part analysis. This unique book will resonate with students, writers, writing teachers, and bibliophiles.

I give Why Writing Matters five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!