Attack of the Copula Spiders: Essays on Writing Book

A GLOBE & MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR 2012

"Glover is a master of narrative structure."
—Wall Street Journal

In the tradition of E.M. Forster, John Gardner, and James Wood, Douglas Glover has produced a book on writing at once erudite, anecdotal, instructive, and amusing. Attack of the Copula Spiders represents the accumulated wisdom of a remarkable literary career: novelist, short story writer, essayist, teacher and mentor, Glover has for decades been asking the vital questions. How does the way we read influence the way we write? What do craft books fail to teach aspiring writers about theme, about plot and subplot, about constructing point of view? How can we maintain drama on the level of the sentence—and explain drama in the sentences of others? What is the relationship of form and art? How do you make words live?
Whether his subject is Alice Munro, Cervantes, or the creative writing classroom, Glover's take is frank and fresh, demonstrating again and again that graceful writers must first be strong readers. This collection is a call-to-arms for all lovers of English, and Attack of the Copula Spiders our best defense against the assaults of a post-literate age.

Douglas Glover is the award-winning author of five story collections, four novels, and two works of non-fiction. He is currently on the faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program.

Praise for Douglas Glover

"A master of narrative structure." - Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life, Wall Street Journal

"So sharp, so evocative, that the reader sees well beyond the tissue of words into ... the author's poetic grace." - The New Yorker

"Glover invents his own assembly of critical approaches and theories that is eclectic, personal, scholarly, and smart ... a direction for future literary criticism to take." - The Denver Quarterly

"A ribald, raunchy wit with a talent for searing self-investigation." - The Globe and Mail

"Knotty, intelligent, often raucously funny." - Maclean's

"Passionately intricate." - The Chicago Tribune

"Darkly humorous, simultaneously restless and relentless." - Kirkus Reviews