posted
I was talking to a Librarian yesterday as I checked out Lawrence Durell's Bitter Lemons (if you have not read it, do so) commenting on the fact that, like so many readers in ages past (Durell is inexplicably no longer in popular favor), I was enchanted by his lyrical prose. She made some comment about how few people read books because of the prose anymore.
I had had similar thoughts myself. People seem to choose to read books based on anything other than the quality of the prose, which should be the most important factor.
Too many books these days read like this:
"Bob pulls his gun. He shoots the Syrian Ambassador. Then he sleeps with his wife."
I exaggerate only slightly.
Yann Martel's award winning novel Life of Pi was actually criticized by many of the self-appointed critics of Amazon as having "too much description."
The ideal novel should have in it a strong element of the prose poem. I have often thought that the role of the writer is primarily to be an observer, and then to be a poet, then a philosopher and only lastly a storyteller.
This view is not in vogue, for we live in the age of the thriller and the self-help book; an epoch of those ubiquitous, depressing, bookstores that pedal glossy magazines and mass-market paperbacks at the small airports now scattered across continents.
Perhaps we should not be judged by such places, bordellos of cheaply written soulless novels. It is, after all, difficult to read anything of substance while flying, as I learned by trying to read Hawthorn on the Salt Lake-to-Vancouver stretch of the jet-lag that is a five stop Athens-to-Anchorage flight.
I am told Caesar wrote poems while crossing the alps on horseback, were that we were of such strong stuff.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
I would like to say that Tom CLancy's books are like that except its mor elike "America gets attacked by [insert enemy here] so America led by Jeasus Reagon uses some brand new weapon system to kill everyone and his brother. The End.
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While that's true of most of his recent books, that isn't really the case in his older ones. The Cardinal of the Kremlin, for example, is a very excellent book. Unfortunately, as time went on his books became increasingly bad. It's kind of a shame, really.
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posted
Meh. Prose isn't all it's cracked up to be. Focusing on prose to the detriment of plot and character just makes for a bad book, imho.
Great prose alone does not equal a great book. Great plots alone do not make great books. Great characters alone do not make great books.
You need a balance of all of these - ideally greatness in all. To have one without the others just doesn't do it for me.
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: Great prose alone does not equal a great book. Great plots alone do not make great books. Great characters alone do not make great books.
You need a balance of all of these - ideally greatness in all. To have one without the others just doesn't do it for me.
I definitely agree with this, although of course each person will give diffent weight to the various categories. Personally, prose tends to be one of the least important parts for me. I've forced myself through books whose writing I didn't like when the characters and plot drew my attention. Good writing, on the other hand, is rarely enough to make me read through a book whose plot doesn't interest me. Of course, a book where all three are excellent is always a great find.
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posted
Prose is a fine thing; but it's a bonus. Character and plot will carry a book through even if the prose is not all it might be; prose, alone, will not save a book that lacks either of these.
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posted
For me, I must care about the characters in the story. That is the most important thing for me. If I don't identify with anyone and don't feel a connection with the person(s) I am reading about, then I close the book forever. Having good prose certainly can help with this.
Someimes I want to read something purely entertaining - like a spy thriller. Sometimes I am too impatient for the long descriptions of Hugo or Dumas. Other times I really enjoy spending a quiet afternoon taking my time reading Hugo and the depth of the characters in the story.
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Yeah, count me in with the people who think that prose is one of the least important parts of liking or choosing a book. But it does play a part.
For example: I thought that The Davinci Code was very poorly written. I will still read Dan Browns other books as I found the ideas pretty interesting, but only if I get given one to read, I won't actively seek them out. No matter how interesting his ideas were, they put me off really enjoying his books because of the way that they were put together.
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posted
Come to think of it, Harry Turtledove is a case where prose might actually save the day. I mean, the characters are a bit wooden, but it's the writing that really turns me off. I'd read his books if he had an editor to tell him when he's repeating himself, and when he's stating the obvious.
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posted
The style of prose in a book serves a purpose. "Beautiful" prose is only appropriate in some cases. Imagine if Chuck Palahniuk wrote Fight Club in flowery prose. It doesn't work.
Shakespeare has different characters speak in very different styles, for example switching form iambic p to blank verse, for the effect.
If you read thinking that it's only "quality" prose that makes a book good, you're doing it wrong.
Pel, you are very much a style over substance sort of guy. That's not a good thing. Style is like a set of clothes. It can do a very good job of enhancing something or it can be very detrimental and/or expose flaws, but ultimately, there's got to be something inside the suit and that's the part the really gives it shape.
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posted
Pel, let me recommend Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards and Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell to you. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: Meh. Prose isn't all it's cracked up to be. Focusing on prose to the detriment of plot and character just makes for a bad book, imho.
Great prose alone does not equal a great book. Great plots alone do not make great books. Great characters alone do not make great books.
You need a balance of all of these - ideally greatness in all. To have one without the others just doesn't do it for me.
Luckily you can't define "greatness" in any particular way. A book's prose could be "great" simply for their near invisibility, as anything too beautiful or alluring might upset the nature of the book. Same goes for all those things: sometimes greatness is relative to the weight of the element in a story. Characters need not be great, if great characters would be wrong for the book. This makes the TREATMENT of the material great, even if the material itself seems not to be. Crazy huh?
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posted
MrSquicky beat me to the "Fight Club" example.
For me, a book is a combination of pieces and I like them them to be balanced. A good plot written poorly is as unappealing to me as amazing prose that isn't telling a story.
And how would you define "good prose?" There's more out there than "lyrical prose." The minimalists would be sad to hear that only flowery writing was in.
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posted
As a writer, I love words. As a reader, however, I have to say that pretty words are not the be all and end all of literature. Yes, it's nice if the words flow in an aesthetically pleasing manner. That's much better than trying to wade through clumsy prose.
Still, I have to be honest. I'm not intereted in reading pretty words just because they are pretty. I don't see the point in wasting time doing that; the writer also needs to have something interesting to say.
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posted
I'm going to agree with most of the posts that I want a good story and interesting characters to go with my prose. I really tried to like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but the story never goes anywhere. At least, it didn't go anywhere in the first half of the book, and that was as much time as I was willing to give it.
If I want pretty writing, I'll read a poem. A short poem.
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posted
I didn't like it either MC, and I finished the whole thing. For me, the writing wasn't pretty so much as it was cute. I didn't mind cute, I'd say I even liked it in The Baroque Cycle, but, to me, there just wasn't anything else there.
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quote:Originally posted by littlemissattitude: Still, I have to be honest. I'm not intereted in reading pretty words just because they are pretty. I don't see the point in wasting time doing that; the writer also needs to have something interesting to say.
of course - but he also has to know how to say it. just like not every bilingual person is a good translator, not every person who has a good idea is a good writer/author.
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posted
I feel like one of them Popes had something to say about this:
quote:WHAT dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs, What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things, I sing -- This Verse to C---, Muse! is due; This, ev'n Belinda may vouchfafe to view: Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise, If She inspire, and He approve my Lays. Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle? Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplor'd, Cou'd make a gentle Belle reject a Lord? And dwells such Rage in softest Bosoms then? And lodge such daring Souls in Little Men?
posted
The Baroque Cycle is making me mad too. I loved so many of his other books... Why did Quicksilver have to be so plodding and fancy? Get to the point! Any point!
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posted
It's funny that you mention The Baroque Cycle. I just finished System of the World the other day, and commented to Christy as I was reading it that it made some of the more infuriating and annoying parts of the earlier books worthwhile, and that I would have probably made it a higher priority to finish the series had I known that it would all have a payoff someday.
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quote:People seem to choose to read books based on anything other than the quality of the prose, which should be the most important factor.
When you say "quality of the prose," do you mean elegance and readabilty, I'd say that you are trumpeting style over substance. If you mean by "quality of the prose," a sharp and clear telling of the matter at hand, I'll agree.
I've hit a run of good writers who are readable, but they don't talk about anything I think worthy of caring about, and then there are some writers who write about compelling subject matter who aren't the deepest thinkers or the clearest writers. I find either side frustrating.
I'm in the middle of "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," by James Agee, and while he errs on one side in one chapter and another in the other, I find that he is doing a darn good job overall.
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posted
To me, the story is by far the most important part of a book. If the story is really good, I'll read the book no matter how bad the writing is. I read to hear people's stories, not to be impressed with their writing. Everyone has a story to tell, not just good writers.
That said, good writing gives me more motivation to read a book. So if you're trying to write something, try to make the writing as good as you can. Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I can't read a book that's not well-written, but I'm not in love with the idea of prose like Pelegius is.
The point of a book is to get across a good story, good characters, a good idea, or hopefully all three. The point of prose is not to get in the way of this. It doesn't matter if the writing is so clunky you assume the author is tone-deaf, or elaborite to the point of incomprehension.
quote:"Bob pulls his gun. He shoots the Syrian Ambassador. Then he sleeps with his wife."
Actually, I think that's pretty good prose. It's concise and direct. I didn't notice the writing style, but got a very good mental picture of the action. It wouldn't make for a good scene in and of itself, but it would be a snappy thing for Bob's friend to say if he were describing the event to someone else after the fact.
quote:This view is not in vogue, for we live in the age of the thriller and the self-help book; an epoch of those ubiquitous, depressing, bookstores that pedal glossy magazines and mass-market paperbacks at the small airports now scattered across continents. [43 words]
Perhaps we should not be judged by such places, bordellos of cheaply written soulless novels. [15 words] It is, after all, difficult to read anything of substance while flying, as I learned by trying to read Hawthorn on the Salt Lake-to-Vancouver stretch of the jet-lag that is a five stop Athens-to-Anchorage flight. [41 words]
And that is bad prose. Have you ever read that the average reader finds it difficult to comprehend sentences longer than 29 words long? By the time you've reached the end, you've kinda forgot the beginning and need to reread parts.
Maybe you should replace some of those commas and semi-colons with periods. ^Then^ you can talk about how nobody else can write.
Also, you sound kind of pompous.
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posted
I'm thinking of books I've read in fairly recent years whose prose style has impressed or moved me (and if the plot, characters, etc. aren't gripping, then the prose won't keep me reading). Three authors that jump to mind are Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer), Wallace Stegner (Crossing to Safety --I haven't yet read his other works), and Leif Enger (Peace Like a River).
There are so many styles that work: muscly and spare, lyrical, even ornate.
But as long as clumsy prose doesn't actually get in the way of the story (which it so often does--especially in SF and other genre novels), the style is not number one on the list of things I'm looking for. It's an added bonus that can make a well-told story breathtaking.
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posted
HP Lovecraft is another who let his love for the ornate language of a by-gone era wreak havoc on otherwise intriguing stories. Though I will say he is also an exception that proves the rule, for I find his Dreamlands stuff (as opposed to the Cthulhu mythos) better suited for his weakness for colorful prose.
quote:And that is bad prose. Have you ever read that the average reader finds it difficult to comprehend sentences longer than 29 words long? By the time you've reached the end, you've kinda forgot the beginning and need to reread parts.
Actually, I thought it was perfectly acceptable prose. Long sentences are only a problem if they are badly structured or improperly punctuated. The first sentence has a correctly placed semi-colon (always a treat), which neatly divides it in manageable chunks. The third sentence could possibly be improved by breaking it in two; however, it is logically structured with commas in the right places and thus not at all difficult to understand. I think the modern insistance on shorter sentences to improve clarity might lose us other qualities in the language and I have personally turned off that function in my Word editor. If the average person can't follow my prose, that is his problem .
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quote:Originally posted by Tristan: The first sentence has a correctly placed semi-colon (always a treat), which neatly divides it in manageable chunks.
Correctly placed? I don't see an independent clause to the right of the semicolon.
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posted
Oh. You are right about that. However, even an incorrectly placed semi-colon functions to lessen the negative effects of the length of the sentence.
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posted
Using Pelegius' listing of the roles of a novel writer, I would rank them in the following order: story teller, is observer, poet. Last should be philosopher, but that role should be near invisible tot he reader, better that the story convey the philosophy. The better the book, the more likely it is that each of these roles is ballanced and well represented. Beautiful prose without a story good to graet story to go along with it loses a lot of its meaing. A good story adds to the prose. The two should good hand in hand. Good prose often also goes hand in hand with obervations and noting details in the novel. The better the observation or detail conveyed by the author, the better the prose. Otherwise, all you have a lovely sounding jibberish.
IMHO, one of the best masters of crafting a beautiful sentence now publishing is Ian Mcewan, author of Atonement, Enduring Love, Saturday, and several other great books. Every time I read one of his books I find myself rereading whole pages or paragraphs. Rarely does a page of his go by that I don't come across a sentence or paragraph and think that there is no way I could ever write like this.
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quote:Originally posted by Tristan: Oh. You are right about that. However, even an incorrectly placed semi-colon functions to lessen the negative effects of the length of the sentence.
A colon or a hyphen would have been a better choice, I think. I largely agree with you, though; Pel's prose tends toward overwrought melodrama, but it's usually fairly easy to follow.
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quote:If the average person can't follow my prose, that is his problem.
Thank You.
One of the greatest, and certainly one of the most accessible, works of twentieth-century literature is Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales." It can be enjoyed by readers of any age (my father read it to me every year at Christmas from when I was about four), and yet, it begins with this sentence:—
quote: One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
Sixty-five words of beautiful prose that even a young child can understand. Some more examples, for the uncovinced
quote:All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence, opening lines of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
And, perhaps the Greatest sentence in the English language:
quote:Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-- One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
54 Words
Clearly,breviloquence is far from being the defining feature of good writing.
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posted
But why use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice?
Seriously, in most communications, brevity is the soul of wit. If you can't say it clearly and directly, then you're probably padding your prose with fifty-cent SAT words and adding no substance in the bargain.
On the other hand, I like a well-wrought sentence for its own sake. I just think length is not a requirement for well-wrought.
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quote: Seriously, in most communications, brevity is the soul of wit.
I admire Wittgenstein, but, were I given the opportunity to edit any thesis of any major philosopher, I would change
quote: The limits of my language are the limits of my reality.... Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one most remain silent.
to
quote: The limits of my language are the limits of my objective reality.... Whereof one cannot speak objectively/logically, thereof one must remain philosophically silent.
Poetry and fiction allow us to explore the depths of our non-objectivity, the mysterious nature of humanity. In a sense, human endeavors and human nature are at war with one another, simultaneously seeking to mythologize and to demythologize, to enchant and to disenchant.
Finally, for something completely different,
quote: But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
A three-hundred word sentence from a man routinely cited as the greatest and most accessible orator of the later twentieth century. I have been asked to look to the prose of Martin Luther King, Jr. for examples of great writing. I have, and he evidently didn’t mind length either.
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posted
Those examples you gave aren't good because of their length. They're good writing in general. Length doesn't automatically make writing good.
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No, of course not, nor did I claim they were. Nor, however, are they good in spite of their length. Their genius lies in the perfect joining of emotion and word, the perfect flowing of pathos to the pen. Men write best in a state of indignation, when they are at their wittiest, their most eloquent and their most unbridled.
The great poets of the world, Catullus and Auden and Thomas, wrote portraits, near perfect portraits, of their passion. There is more power in Ginsberg's uncontrolled prose than in Longfellow's pedantic formality, and more power in Thomas's barely controlled pathos than in either. Yeats is at his best in "The Second Coming," an infinitely superior poem to the more popular "Lake Isle Innisfree."
quote: Art is illogical, if it were logical it would serve no function. Logic is universal and limited; art personal and limitless, or, rather, limited only by the ability of the creator. Logic is limited to basic computations of the truth or falsehood of a proposition, a type of efficient binary for the human computer. Art is broader, enabling humans to communicate a reality beyond the limits of their philosophical language. Such a reality must, then, be subjective, and thus must art also be subjective.
From a recent, if mediocre, paper of mine
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posted
I thought you were defending your lengthy sentences by pointing out other writers who also used long sentences.
I know very little about poetry, and I would have to say "The Second Coming" is by far Yeats most popular poem. It's certainly the only Yeats poem I've ever heard.
I adore both Tennyson's Ulysses and Yeats' The Second Coming. But I adore them because they're poems. The same writing in a work of prose would render the literature worthless. The purpose of poetry and prose is different. Poetry is meant to be beautiful, prose is meant to either tell a story or inform. I don't quite understand why you think prose should fulfill poetry's function.
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posted
I hardly think that the primary purpose of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is to either tell a story or inform. Its meaning is its aesthetic value.
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posted
I love that piece. As an actor, I loved doing a dramatic reading of it (although another actor got the best parts, of course.)
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