[John Beaton]

I also enjoy Cormac McCarthy's prose and the early part of "The Crossing" has some of his best passages. Here are some quotes from that book.

John

[W.F. Lantry]

Janice,

You may be interested to know there's a similar thread going on right now on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/c...have_read_and/

Most of these particular redditors aren't writers, they're book lovers. Their choices are surprisingly diverse. And before the haughty high-brows hereabout scoff at their selections, it might be best to remember: these are our readers. It's worth a look.

Thanks,

Bill

[Janice D. Soderling]

And before the haughty high-brows hereabout scoff...

Haughty highbrows? Here?

[Cally Conan-Davies]

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests—and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith—the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."


The beginning of Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness.

[R. Nemo Hill]

"I used to think," Nora said, "that people just went to sleep, or if they did not go to sleep that they were themselves, but now—" she lit a cigarette and her hands trembled—"now I see that the night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep."

"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor. "Let a man lay himself down in the Great Bed and his 'identity' is no longer his own, his 'trust' is not with him, and his 'willingness' is turned over and is of another permission. His distress is wild and anonymous. He sleeps in a Town of Darkness, member of a secret brotherhood. He neither knows himself nor his outriders; he beserks a fearful dimension and dismounts, miraculously, in bed!

"His heart is tumbling in his chest, a dark place! Though some go into the night as a spoon breaks easy water, others go head foremost against a new connivance; their horns make a dry crying, like the wings of the locust, late come to their shedding.

"Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries—in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then; with the pheasants' necks and the goslings' beaks dangling against the hocks of the gallants, and not a pavement in the place, and everything gutters for miles and miles, and a stench to it that plucked you by the nostrils and you were twenty leagues out! The criers telling the price of wine to such effect that the dawn saw good clerks full of piss and vinegar, and blood letting in side streets where some wild princess in a night shift of velvet howled under a leech; not to mention the palaces of Nymphenburg echoing back to Vienna with the night trip of late kings letting water into plush cans and fine woodwork!

"No," he said, looking at her sharply, "I can see you have not! You should, for the night has been going on a long time!"

She said, "I've never known it before— I thought I did, but it was not knowing at all."

"Exactly," said the doctor. "You thought you knew, and you hadn't even shuffled the cards—now the nights of one period are not the nights of another. Neither are the nights of one city the nights of another....."

Djuna Barnes (Nightwood)

[Woody Long]

What came immediately to my mind on seeing this thread is perhaps too well known:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The last sentence of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

I checked out the reddit.com thread and the entire passage is there.

http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/c...have_read_and/

Fitzgerald no doubt worked hard on this sentence. It has many poetic elements: imagery, alliteration, evocative suggestion of several things, rhythm, concision, etc. For me it is memorable and I find myself silently saying "boats against the current" at various junctures in my day-to-day life.

Fitzgerald's own poetry is generally considered mediocre. But his prose is very often highly poetic and evocative just as language.

There's also Joseph Conrad, near the end of a passage in "Landfalls and Departures" in The Mirror of the Sea:

"Was he looking out for a strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings for his last Departure?

It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of supreme and final attention"

http://www.classicreader.com/book/1587/3/

A wonderful metaphor IMO.

--Woody

[Orwn Acra]

Bits and pieces from novel full of bits and pieces:

"It was a dam' fine day: and the atmosphere, warm champagne sun, oh, glory!

The earth was blotto with the growth of willow, peach, mango-blossom, and flower. Every ugly thing, and smell, was in incognito, as fragrance and freshness.

Being prone, this typical sprint-time dash and vivacity, played an exulting phantasmagoria note on the inner-man. Medically speaking, the happy circumstances vibrated my ductless glands, and fused into me a wibble-wobble Whoa, Jamieson! fillip-and-flair to live, live!"

...

"The yonder hill-peaks of the Himalaya were tranquil.

The pines and poplars were still: their scent, too, asleep.

Came wafting from afar, the hushed murmur of a brook.

Above, a star was shining: its asterisk lustre excelling the Koh-i-noor's: by the grace of Allah, surpassing in vividity the stone, which, the Occidental mortal, on mijn beste Hoogeachte Herr Jacobus Jonker, once un-earthed."

...

"In my copper begging-bowl, there is a steely blade of curved light, an illumed scimitar, silver, brilliantly glossed, and it is reflecting the scene.

The scene in the miniature is mostly grey and green, and there is still some color in the shadows.

I look at it: fascinated, lulled...

Then, I see the slate-colored hedges on the bank of the river. They are calm, one with the mass of the surrounding shapes and forms.

Silhouetted against the star-lit sky, the forest is still, blended into the yonder sable hills.

Not a thing separated from another.

Everything is in a universal embrace: truly. a slumber of love!"

- G. V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr

[John Whitworth]

Ah Orwn. I thought I was the only one who had read this masterpiece. It reminds me, I don't quite know why, of 'At Swim-two-birds' by the man who is sometimes Flann O'Brien. I suppose Joyce is the greater writer, but I never reread Joyce and O'Brien aka Myles na Gopaleen sits dog-eared on my bedroom shelf.

So does Desani. I suppose Sterne is their distant ancestor.

[Maryann Corbett]

Clearly I should reread many of these books.

Not to disagree with anything here, but it's been thought-provoking to read this thread in the same week as the rules of writing attributed to the late Elmore Leonard, who is also supposed to have said, "If it sounds like writing, rewrite it."

[Janice D. Soderling]

I am sorry to see that Elmore Leonard died yesterday. http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ars-publishing

But regarding his writing rules and how they relate to beautiful prose, one should remember that he was a crime novelist. That's a whole 'nother ball game.