One of my favorite prose stylists, Annie Dillard, has a new novel out.
Some gorgeous examples of that prose:
“in her company he wrapped himself in misery like a robe. Between them self-consciousness bulked as a river silts its channel.”
“His hot eyes cooled. Invisible clouds blocked the sky and its atmospheres where noises of people dissolve. The sea beside him, a monster with a lace hem, drained east.”
“Twice a day behind their house the tide boarded the sand. Four times a year the seasons flopped over. Clams live like this, but without so much reading.”
I regret to have to say I dislike Annie Dillard's prose style enough that I wasn't able to make it through that famous book she wrote. Um, the one about the pond, or whatever it was.
But I did babysit for her 5 year old daughter Rosie once, when I was in high school. What a rambunctious kid.
I regret to have to say I dislike Annie Dillard's prose style enough that I wasn't able to make it through that famous book she wrote.
Oh, good, I was sitting here thinking, "Oh, dear, there goes my literary sophistication, that's some fairly overwrought stuff."
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (I just went and looked it up.)
I am more an E. B. White kind of prose style fan.
Yeah, Annie Dillard is a little ... well, overwrought is as good a word as any. For me, anyway.
Roger Zelazny would go off into flights of twisting imagery, but he used it to describe a specific event/process/proceeding, and it was easy to skip if I wasn't in the mood for a verbal acid trip.
I like the way she wroughts!
Though admittedly "prose stylist" is a kind of back handed compliment comparable to "writer's writer."
But I am not the type of reader who insists that prose be transparent, a clean glass pane. I often prefer the stained glass window approach.
This surprises us not at all.
