prose style | prose style
Apr.06.2013
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion displays all of her formidable skills as a writer and perhaps demonstrates a way in which writing itself can be a critical survival technique in the face of great loss and tragedy.
The year in question lasted from the end of 2003 well into 2004....
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Feb.01.2013
I'm sometimes asked about my favorite writers and answer citing too many to make much of an impression--either about my taste or the writers themselves. One writer who always makes my lists, however, is Alice Munro. If that sparks any interest, and I'm asked what I like about her, I...
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Dec.29.2012
Although Ernest Hemingway's early short stories are more florid, his style became almost journalistic, with writing that draws you into the current of the story before you realize it. He was the master of understatement; hyperbole was not Hem. His best prose is light and airy, almost dreamlike....
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Nov.02.2012
Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero is a novel worth reading for many reasons, and although it’s not a flawless book, as I’ll discuss later, that may even be one of the reasons to read it.
The genius of the book is Ondaatje’s ability to focus his splendid prose on intriguing characters and...
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Nov.14.2009
I write to teach myself.
How to make an emotionally isolated, sexually frustrated, proud, angry, hopeless man an interesting read.
The first chapter of Robert Goolrick’s new novel, A Reliable Wife, is devoted to Ralph Truitt, a rich man in an isolated community who has advertised for “a reliable...
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Apr.09.2009
The other day Josh Hill, a British reader of fantasy, wrote me inquiring why I write the way I do. Since I have always been somewhat of a stylist and fought the cookie-cutter use of language becoming so prevalent today my response for Josh's blog became a personal explosion. It turned out his...
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Dec.14.2008
After a certain age (perhaps 30? perhaps as early as 20?), one probably shouldn't read too much of DH Lawrence's writing, or too little of it. Now and again I return to his fiction, poetry, and essays either to reread something or take on a new work. He's a unique, over-the-top, incantatory,...
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