Back to results
Cover image for book The Art of Subtext

The Art of Subtext

Beyond Plot
By:Charles Baxter
Publisher:Macmillan Trade
Print ISBN:9781555974732
eText ISBN:9781555970963
Edition:0
Format:Reflowable

eBook Features

Instant Access

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Offline

Access your eTextbook anytime and anywhere

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

Charles Baxter inaugurates The Art of, a new series on the craft of writing, with the wit and intelligence he brought to his celebrated book Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction.

Fiction writer and essayist Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot discusses and illustrates the hidden subtextual overtones and undertones in fictional works haunted by the unspoken, the suppressed, and the secreted. Using an array of examples from Melville and Dostoyevsky to contemporary writers Paula Fox, Edward P. Jones, and Lorrie Moore, Baxter explains how fiction writers create those visible and invisible details, how what is displayed evokes what is not displayed.

The Art of Subtext is part of The Art of series, a new line of books by important authors on the craft of writing, edited by Charles Baxter. Each book examines a singular, but often assumed or neglected, issue facing the contemporary writer of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. The Art of series means to restore the art of criticism while illuminating the art of writing.

• 2026 © SAU Tech Bookstore. All Rights Reserved.