Tag: Mark Twain

I’m Sorry, Anna.

Posted on by Michael Kahn
For more years than I’d care to admit, my take on Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina was perfectly summed up by fellow Missourian Mark Twain, who famously defined a “classic” as  a novel “that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” But then a few months ago, while browsing my bookshelves in…
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Bringing Up the Rear: The Literary Mic Drop

Posted on by Michael Kahn
Many years ago, my agent offered me the following advice: “The most important sentence of your novel is the first one. The second most important sentence is the last one.” There certainly have been vivid, memorable first lines, many of which we can quote by heart–from “Call me Ishmael” in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to “It was a bright…
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Who Tells the Story: From the Bible to Marlowe

Posted on by Michael Kahn
Who will tell the story? Every author must answer that question before typing “Chapter One” at the top of that first page. Not who will write the story. That’s the author’s job. But who will tell it? Who will serve as the narrator? One common answer is known as Third Person Omniscient. That’s where the…
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