The Art Of series is a new series of brief books by contemporary writers on important craft issues. Each book
investigates an element of the craft of fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry by discussing works by authors
past and present. The books in the Art Of series are not strictly manuals, but serve readers and writers by illuminating
aspects of the craft of writing that people think they already know but don�t really know. 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.