[stephenspower]

No one would accuse Jack Vance of high art, but this paragraph from "Eyes of the Overworld" describing his greatest and most characteristic character, the amoral trickster Cugel, set me to reading at age 14 everything he's ever written. Like HP Lovecraft's, his diction and how it's deployed can be copied, but usually only poorly. For example, Colson Whitehead's "The Intuitionist" sounded to me like a bad Vance pastiche, although the tribute collection, "Songs of the Dying Earth," edited by George RR Martin, really nails the style (and his characters' constant dissembling and learned mistrust, which it often reflects) throughout. Vance's greatest gift was to use familiar words, such as "lozenges," in unexpected and, consequently, fantastical ways.

"Cugel was a man of many capabilities, with a disposition at once flexible and pertinacious. He was long of leg, deft of hand, light of finger, soft of tongue. His hair was the blackest of black fur, growing low down his forehead, coving sharply back above his eyebrows. His darting eye, long inquisitive nose and droll mouth gave his somewhat lean and bony face an expression of vivacity, candor, and affability. He had known many vicissitudes, gaining therefrom a suppleness, a fine discretion, a mastery of both bravado and stealth. Coming into the possession of an ancient lead coffin—after discarding the contents—he had formed a number of leaden lozenges."