Review by Booklist Review
"Envy, the Writer's Disease," an essay Friedman published in the New York Times Book Review, launched this book on how writers' emotions both impede and propel their work. The section on envy is the best, but Friedman also delves into writer's block, distraction, writing seminars, and the hazards of writing about one's own family. For the last, she draws sample scenarios that will surely bring down the wrath of many relations. Actually, it is the examples and writing samples, rather than the lessons, that are the most captivating. More on handling the demons as well as the practical hurdles of life as a writer can be found in Art Plotnik's Honk if You're a Writer [BKL Je 15 92]. ~--Denise Perry Donavin
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Inspirational essays on writing--by a novelist aborning whose piece ``Envy, the Writer's Disease'' made the cover of The New York Times Book Review and led to this book. Friedman sets out to uplift the writing reader and fellow novelist-to-be by opening her veins about the hardships of writing. More often, however, she opens her mind and gives the reader interesting snippets of Freud, Krishnamurti, Jung, and other wizards of the id. Most of her references are to women writers, with Mary Shelley getting the longest play in one of the best and most original passages here, in which the main problem of Dr. Frankenstein, the monster's ``author,'' is that he must ignore his family to get his work done. Friedman finds this problem common to authors who think they must write about their families but who must ignore the family's sensibilities in order to do so. She had that problem herself, she tells us, with her neurotically overweight sister. Friedman also talks about beginner's envy of famous writers, pointing out even Shakespeare's envy (``Desiring this man's scope, and that man's art'') and cries, ``Shakespeare desired another's art? Dear Lord, whose?'' Even so, this piece, the book's opening, is its most tedious stretch. The author is far livelier on schools for writers, writer's block, her first nonfiction sale (at age 34), and the landing of the contract for this book--at which moments the agony and the ecstasy are personal indeed and less abstract than Friedman's perfectly worked out similes and deep thoughts about the writer's mind. Not exciting as literary flower-picking, and only middling on the psychology of authors. Friedman's first novel should bring a brighter bloom.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
