Denis johnson train dreams reviews

Reviewed by Liam Callanan

I once taught a creative writing class that had the novella as its theme. Like otherteachers, I worried that fiction-writing workshops ― mine, at least ― had become short-story myopic, focusing on that form at the exclusion of all others.

At the same time, I was a bit gun-shy about heading to the other end of the spectrum and mounting a novel-writing workshop ― especially given John Gardner’s infamous description of one, wherein he had his students produce one new chapter and revise another each week: “All but one of the students kept to the schedule.

The exception, a town woman with a full-time job, was hospitalized as a result of overwork. ... [S]tudents who were involved with other college courses that semester dropped those other courses.” Of course, successful novel workshops exist, and so, too, ones that center on the short story, but I decided to give novellas a try.

We wound up having a fruitful semester, but the whole ti