HAHA, you posted what I posted in this thread. That's kind of weird, out of the whole book, we posted the same thing. And it just goes to show how much people read other people's posts
Haha, oops. I thought I read through the other posts but I must have had some kind of mental block. To be fair that is a passage worth pointing out twice . And let's not forget that great minds think alike so we must have great minds.
Except that the phrase, and indeed most of the book, is the main character, Humbert Humbert, speaking to the reader, and that sort of wording fits in precisely with the sort of character he is. Since Humbert is speaking to the reader, and the word choice, style etc. reflects his character. So it isn't really Nabokov using this wording in narrative description, it is a character "talking," and if an author today were to create a character like Humbert for a story, she might very well use these sorts of phrases because those are the phrases the character would use.
I'm becoming more and more impressed with Tom Wolfe's use of English. It's like he almost plays with the language. Here a line out of Bonfire of the Vanities that was so good I did a double take. An assistant D.A. is contemplating his summation as prosecutor in a trial (Herbert 92X is the defendant), with which (along with his powerful neck) he wants to really move a beautiful girl in the jury:
From McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses". As he turned to go he heard the train. He stopped and waited for it. He could feel it under his feet. It came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing groundshudder watching it till it was gone. Then he turned and went back to the house.
Sheez! It might be that I'm not a native speaker but I find sentences that long and filled with description pretty hard to read without losing the concept. Sometimes less IS more and this to me is a perfect example of it.
I love it. It starts with a few short sentences, and then when the train comes, the long sentence hurtles along just like the train, noisy and clattering like the train, comma-free to emphasize the speed, and only ends when the train is gone. Read it aloud - it's a really good effect.
I didn't think of it that way, LOL. If you see it like that it IS quite fun actually. Anyway, I had to read it several times to understand it because my head switch off somewere at "...mesquite brakes..." but then again it could be the shortcomings of my english... I'm not very used to read books in english, forum talk is one thing but this is something totally different. Though I liked the effect of the last sentence after that long description. thanks for explaining
I agree. Its an excellent description. I've never read any Cormac McCarthy, But I really intend to at some stage
REMINDER: ALL quoted material in this thread (or anywhere on the site, for that matter) MUST be properly attributed - that means both author (e.g. Cormac McCarthy, not just McCarthy) and title. If this is not followed, this thread WILL be closed.
I'm always astounded at the level of English some foreign people (away from England) have on this site. You're Swedish aren't you? I've always found European countries, especially Scandinavian ones, have a brilliant grasp of English. Must be the education system eh?
Yes I'm swedish. We do speak quite ok english here I think, like in the other scandinavian countries. could be the educational system as you say or the fact that we don't have dubbing (??) in films etc like many south european countries have, which I'm sure improves the english skills as well as every tv-show or movie is in the orginal language (which is usually english, we have a lot more english tv-series etc than swedish ones... I guess we don't produce as many as you do ) We also have incorporated many english (or rather american ) expressions in our vocabulary, I have been living abroad for years now and just recently came home and my english didn't benefit from it, I haven't been using it much during the last 5 years or so... but coming here and writing and thinking in english makes it come back to me.
I think the fact that you're fluent in English is pretty impressive in itself; but it's much more impressive when it comes to writing, as people who are reading pieces of fiction don't exactly give concessions to the fact that you're foreign. if there were any deficiencies in the way you speak, it would be so much more noticeable in trying to write literature. I think a lot of us English speakers are lazy in the fact that we know only one language, and you foreigners are expected to learn English. I'd love to be bi-lingual, but you're obviously helped when youre kind of forced with all the TV shows you have at home
I forgot to say we do have subtitles, but it still is an unconscious learning when you listen to english everywhere without even noticing you're learning it I was so happy the other day at work when I received compliments for my english from an american customer ) it's funny because speaking with native english speakers My english comes out great, but if a foreign tourist comes along who struggles in making him/herself understood in english mine sinks a few levels too. I love languages, though. Both english and italian are such creative languages when it comes to nuances and creating "new" words that makes perfectly sense.
Translation As requested, I have now translated the excerpt from Barbara Willard's The Sprig of Broom to gizoogillian, using the brilliant textilizer of Gizoogle. "It was mid-October, tha harvest well stored. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! Da sun was as bangin' as if it shone up in tha straight-up original gangsta week of September yo, but a tumblin sky threw pimped out cloudz before tha wind, n' when tha sun was obscured then all tha promise of winter was up in tha air. Shiiit, dis aint no joke. But it was magic weather, a gift ta dopeen tha sadnizz of tha endin year. Shiiit, dis aint no joke. There was still blackberries, thick n' drippin wit juice yo, but these would remain on tha bushes, fo' by now, as it was holla'd, tha Devil had spat on dem n' they should not be eaten. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. So birdz gorged themselves, n' tha ground n' tha leavez of tha bramblez was strewn wit purple droppings. Da water, half shadow n' half glitter, threw back tha colourz of beech n' bracken tossin dem over tha bouldaz like gold n' copper coins."
("...just write and be dammed then..." laughed the goblin, continuing "...for it's never going to be right for everyone now, where at times it'll seem too descriptive for them, whereas at other times it's not nearly descriptive enough for them...", perhaps the goblin was only suggesting that the real criteria here was does one's pen do justice to that vision one had, explaining "...for finally they'll walk away from you on to someone else but you can't walk away form what you have written can you, so don't compromise yourself for their sakes...", as the goblin then offered something of his that he liked in his turn imagining that was the norm here) repost from elsewhere, the goblin's blog cold-spell casts geneva to fog, its gray somehow blurring into the blank and becoming an appropriate backdrop to this then: the goblin's D-day with the dentist, well not really, it's that first year dental student "...hi there, call me benny hill, please sit down, comfortable..." as he whips out a syringe with a smile and a style straight out Hitchcock's psycho shower scene "...now stay still, no need to clinch the chair tight like that, this will only take a moment...", smiles, looks puzzled, takes another look at the ex-ray, grasps the idea, nods his head, smiles again, stabs and injects "...there that wasn't too bad was it, now I am just going to clear out that cavity..." the goblin feels as if he is going very slowly up the highest roller coaster ride in his life, the student drills a bit, retracts to drill, makes golf swings in the air "...yes, like that I think, how am I doing..." the goblin dare not reply, he drills on "...rinse please mr. flea..." puts bibs and bobs the goblin's mouth, drills then whoops, out comes a small white gyrating object on the end of his drillhead "...whoops, sorry, we'll just put another cotton swab in then won't we...", but the goblin stupidly replies "...actually could we try a sandbag..." a joke which seems to earn him a gag they call a dig but is in fact an ancient chinese water-torture where goblins slowly drown in their own saliva while probably singing to themselves "...o come all yee spacemen...", ride over, the goblin returns to reality whatever that ever was
He’d angle jokes off them like a handball off a low wall, circle them with words like a banner flapping around a pole, tease their brassieres out of whack with pinching fingers, hold them by the two, points of their hips and lean, as if he were trying to affect the course of a pinball in motion, risking tilt. Jonathan Lethem Motherless Brooklyn
“That was Flint's treasure that we had come so far to seek, and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the Hispaniola. How many it had cost in the ammassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
I have a problem with being too wordy with my descriptions as well. F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors because he is able to describe things vividly without going overboard with words. I think it's his employment of metaphors and similes that really makes his writing stand out, as well as a wry sense of humor. All of these are from The Great Gatsby: "...one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anticlimax." "...then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk." "...[he] was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens." "In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." "He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."
From James Joyce's Ulysses, part of a passage describing the corpse of a drowning victim being recovered: "Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun."
I tend to appreciate the understated descriptions, and honestly I find the best ones in song lyrics, often. Like, same sentiment, same event, from Springsteen: Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack I went out for a ride and I never went back Like a river that don't know where it's flowing I took a wrong turn and I just kept going. And from Steve Earle: Well it was well after dark so I knew my wife and kids were waitin' And I guess I took a left where I generally take a right Well I filled her up with gas, checked the oil at the Texaco station I threw the car seat in the dumpster and headed off into the night They're describing an emotion more than a scene, but I think they're both brilliant.
Read Neuromancer when I was an 18, 19 year old Marine, and William Gibson's opening line has made several "Best First Lines" lists since then. “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” His early work is brilliant, I'm not such a fan of his more recent stuff, but he's still got quite a talent for descriptive writing that evokes mood as well as physicality: “All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void...” From Idoru: From Pattern Recognition: Anyway, I could go on for ages with him, so let's finish up with the good Doctor: "The room looked like the site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey and gorillas." -Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
