The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
The last sentence of Conrad's most widely-read work reinforces the central motif of the novel, namely the contrast between light and dark. Throughout the early pages of the novel, light and dark appear alternately. There is the "luminous space" in the sky, but also a "brooding gloom." The river "shone pacifically" but a mist "like a gauzy and radiant fabric" begins to cover the shoreline. Even the ships mentioned in the beginning reference this contrast of light and dark: mention of The Golden Hind, a treasure ship loaded with gleaming gold, is followed directly by reference to the Erebus, named after the Greek personification of darkness.
At the end of Conrad's novel, however, light is nowhere to be found, only "a black bank of clouds," a river that flows "sombre under an overcast sky" and that flows into "the heart of an immense darkness." For readers of the novel, this transition might seem obvious, but it reinforces the craft of Conrad, and of all authors who control the imagery of the novel to reflect the purpose and themes of the novel itself.
Friday, June 29, 2012
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Annie took another sip of the vodka, letting the alcohol seep through her system, turning bad ideas into good ones.
There are times when the words of a novel are more like poetry than storytelling, when the sound of the language matters as much as the idea. This is one of those great moments in reading. Rearrange the words of the sentence into lines that look like poetry and it would work as a poem. Enough is said and left unsaid to be artful, provoking, meaningful, and beautiful.
While Annie's influence here is vodka, one can easily consider the vodka a metaphor for all influences that have the effect of "turning bad ideas into good ones." Annie's experience can relate to everything from peer pressure to over-zealous ambition, or any other experience when we let outside influences put a veil over our more rational decision making mind, when we go with the flow that we know will probably lead us to some Class V rapids that we would normally avoid.
Wilson, Kevin. The Family Fang. New York: Ecco, 2012.
There are times when the words of a novel are more like poetry than storytelling, when the sound of the language matters as much as the idea. This is one of those great moments in reading. Rearrange the words of the sentence into lines that look like poetry and it would work as a poem. Enough is said and left unsaid to be artful, provoking, meaningful, and beautiful.
While Annie's influence here is vodka, one can easily consider the vodka a metaphor for all influences that have the effect of "turning bad ideas into good ones." Annie's experience can relate to everything from peer pressure to over-zealous ambition, or any other experience when we let outside influences put a veil over our more rational decision making mind, when we go with the flow that we know will probably lead us to some Class V rapids that we would normally avoid.
Wilson, Kevin. The Family Fang. New York: Ecco, 2012.
Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine
My sister said it was an adventure book and that the trouble with adventure books was "all action and no feeling." She said that the book had the moral complexity of a baseball game and that her hand would force no nine-year-old girl to read it.
These two sentences end the first page of Sara Levine's first novel, Treasure Island!!! It is the story of a woman whose life has been anything but an adventure, but who finds adventure within the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and decides to live her life according to the principles she derives from his work. Read Levine's book to discover these principles for yourself.
The sister's description of the adventure book as having "the moral complexity of a baseball game" made it necessary for me to buy the book and read on to page two. The description is fun, engaging, meaningful, and frankly, funny enough to make me smile.
From a critical viewpoint, while Levine could have chosen just about anything devoid of moral complexity to complete this description--a doorbell, a novel's dustjacket, the nightstand upon which you bury books you don't intend to finish--the choice to reference the baseball game places the novel within a particularly American context. The hero of the novel, a college graduate who has moved from odd job to odd job, including ice-cream scooper and pet librarian (you'll see), has a bit of the bootstrapper in her, the rugged individualist, even a bit of the entrepreneur. So the choice is smart as well as funny.
Levine, Sara. Treasure Island!!! New York: Europa Editions, 2012.
These two sentences end the first page of Sara Levine's first novel, Treasure Island!!! It is the story of a woman whose life has been anything but an adventure, but who finds adventure within the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and decides to live her life according to the principles she derives from his work. Read Levine's book to discover these principles for yourself.
The sister's description of the adventure book as having "the moral complexity of a baseball game" made it necessary for me to buy the book and read on to page two. The description is fun, engaging, meaningful, and frankly, funny enough to make me smile.
From a critical viewpoint, while Levine could have chosen just about anything devoid of moral complexity to complete this description--a doorbell, a novel's dustjacket, the nightstand upon which you bury books you don't intend to finish--the choice to reference the baseball game places the novel within a particularly American context. The hero of the novel, a college graduate who has moved from odd job to odd job, including ice-cream scooper and pet librarian (you'll see), has a bit of the bootstrapper in her, the rugged individualist, even a bit of the entrepreneur. So the choice is smart as well as funny.
Levine, Sara. Treasure Island!!! New York: Europa Editions, 2012.
Why We Write
Literature provides examples of moral leadership and moral bankruptcy, descriptions of urban landscapes and idyllic countrysides, unique characters one gets to know as well as oneself and stock characters like the mad scientist. Great literature provides all of these examples within a context of great writing, and that is what this blog is all about. The words, phrases, and sentences that makes us stop and wish we had written that, that make us realize that it has not all been said before. Great literature is great writing. The examples in this blog will come from classic and contemporary literature, and from traditional canon as well as from less well-explored literature, such as great examples from science fiction and fantasy
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