| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Do you enjoy plain or baroque prose? Do you agree with passage below? Have Hemningway et al impoverished prose? Thanks to gvernon here: http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=11406&postcount=19 for finding the following passage on baroque prose and on the work of Lawrence Durrell (whom I first read in the sixties):: "But this does not mean that this jeweled and coruscated style springs full-armed from Durrell's personal gift. He stands in a great tradition of baroque prose. In the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Browne built sentences into lofty arches and made words ring like sonorous bells. Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, used the same principal device as Durrell: richness through accumulation, the marshaling of nouns and epithets into great catalogues among which the eye roves in antiquarian delight. The feverish, clarion-sounding prose of De Quincey is a direct ancestor to that of Justine. And more recently, there is the example of Conrad. In the later parts of Lord Jim and throughout The Rescue, Conrad uses words with the sumptuous exuberance of a jeweler showing off his rarest stones. Here also, language falls upon the reader's senses like brocade. "This baroque ideal of narrative style is, at present, in disfavor. The modern ear has been trained to the harsh, impoverished cadence and vocabulary of Hemingway. Reacting against the excesses of Victorian manner, the modern writer has made a cult of simplicity. He refines common speech but preserves its essential drabness. When comparing a page from the Alexandria novels to the practice of Hemingway or C. P. Snow or Graham Greene, one is setting a gold-spun and jeweled Byzantine mosaic next to a black-and-white photograph. One cannot judge the one by the other. But that does not signify that Durrell is a decadent show-off or that his conception of English prose is erroneous. We may be grateful that Hemingway and his innumerable imitators have made the language colder and more astringent and that they have brought back into fiction the virtue of plain force. But they have done so at a price. Contemporary English usage is incredibly thin and unimaginative. The style of politics and factual communication verges on the illiterate. Having far fewer words at our reach than had the educated man of the seventeenth and even of the late nineteenth century, we say less or say it with a blurred vagueness. Indeed, the twentieth century has seen a great retreat from the power of the word. The main energies of the mind seem directed toward other modes of 'language,' toward the notation of music and the symbol-world of mathematics. Whether in its advertisements, its comic-books, or its television, our culture lives by the picture rather than the word. Hence a writer like Durrell, with his Shakespearean and Joycean delight in the sheer abundance and sensuous variety of speech, may strike one as mannered or precious. But the fault lies with our impoverished sensibility." -- George Steiner, "Lawrence Durrell I: The Baroque Novel" (from Critical Essays on Lawrence Durrell) NB: Avignon Quincunx (by LD) thread here: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=1304 | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.34.11 |
I think it really depends on the skill of the individual writer. I must admit, I feel that quite a few people who get published these days are falling back on the "simple" style of writing simply because they don't possess much skill in their craft. But those who do it really well are every bit as good as writers who employ a richer, more ornate style. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
I love it. Martin Amis's stuff is brilliant. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 87.102.33.174 |
If Ramsey doesn't do it..then it's bad. Rule number one. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
"Language is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars." --Gustave Flaubert But let's have a bloody good go, anyway. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I love it. Martin Amis's stuff is brilliant. ================== I'm not sure if that's sarcastic? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 87.102.33.174 |
“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.” Charles Bukowski | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
Both styles of writing depend entirely on the skill of the writer - compare and contrast Cormac macCarthy (Especially The Road) with anything by Shaun Hutson for "plain prose" for examples how it should and shouldn't be done. Plain prose can create an intensity that is almost impossible to create with baroque prose - I say almost - once again the skill of the writer comes into force here. Steven Sherrill is a great exponent of "baroque" prose with great intensity when he chooses. Toby Litt (IMHO) can do either - his novel "Ghost Story" is baroque in the extreme while Hospital and I Play the drums... are written in a very plain but intensly readable style. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
Reading Raymond Carver's last collection ELEPHANT in 1999 really shook me up – I felt I'd been over-writing all my life. In the end his impact on my own writing style was slight (though, I think, definite). Since then I've fallen in love with a series of writers whose prose is spare and concise and disciplined: Hammett, Goodis, Simenon. I still read and enjoy the likes of Clark Ashton Smith, but only by separating my mental image of the story's events from the stale navel fluff of verbiage that surrounds it. Ornate prose is bad prose as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I love ornate prose. Funny, I love Joel Lane prose, for the same reason. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Frankly, prose bedizened by felicitous embellishments is unnecessarily convoluted, and its effects fundamentally superfluous. Verily, it's infinitely preferable to proffer an uncomplicated, flourish-free sentence on every unfettered occasion. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I'm with Joel on this one. Bukowski, Carver, Etchison, Lane, Hemmingway...they all showed me the way regarding lean, disciplned prose. }“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.” Charles Bukowski Albs, ou are a man after my own heart...  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Aren't you reading Salmon Rushdie at the moment, mate? Isn't he Durrellesque? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
>>>Ornate prose is bad prose as far as I'm concerned. Are you saying this applies to all those writers whose prose "smells of the lamp"? I don't agree. Why be prescriptive? There's room for all kinds of prose, provided it's competent (or preferably consideraly more than that). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I deny that Lane prose is lean and hungry. It's deliciously and ingeniously ornate - and without this facet, the stories would not be told. I can only believe that Zed and I are reading different versions of the same Lane stories. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
We must be, Des - Joel's prose is as lean as a starving dog on Skinny Street. Gary - Rushdie's prose is far from ornate. It's rich and vital, but that's completely different. despite leaping off the page, not a word is wasted. I'd probably say overly ornate prose is bad prose. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
or·nate (ôr-nt) adj. 1. Elaborately, heavily, and often excessively ornamented. 2. Flashy, showy, or florid in style or manner; flowery. To me, that's bad prose, baby. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
I don't think the issue about ornate prose that Des raised was about "wasted words", was it? Makes me wonder whether ornate prose is automatically associated with redundancy. Hence the value-loaded phrases of the perceived alternative: "lean", "disciplined", etc. What, for example, is undisciplined about a page of Conrad? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
OK, sorry, ornate is the wrong word - 'baroque' is better. But one can be ornate with positive vibes - like much art. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
1. Elaborately, heavily, and often excessively ornamented. 2. Flashy, showy, or florid in style or manner; flowery. I guess Shakespeare just wrote bad prose, then. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Dunno, I've never read him.  Surely this is yet another question about personal taste - I've read (and written) both, but prefer lean, discplined, terse prose, particularly with genre fiction. Of all the ornate or baroque prose I've read, a lot of it feels like using words for the sake of it - or, worse still, to show how clever one is. Show me an ornate novel that moves me as much as Of Mice and Men or hits me in the gut as hard as Brighton Rock and I might change my mind. I want prose that provokes an emotional response not an academic one. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I guess Shakespeare just wrote bad prose, then. Do you reckon? I don't. or are you putting words in my mouth? Naughty boy - you don't know where my mouth's been. ;-) I wouldn't describe Willy-boy's prose as ornate. Not at all. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Btw, "Dunno, I've never read him." was a response to the Conrad post... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Just about as fine an example of lean, uncluttered prose as I can think of, yet it's not simple at all: "His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete." -The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Terse, disciplined - impoverished, populist, strait-jacketed. Baroque - rich, allusive, unhealthy OR Terse, disciplined - vibrant, lean, healthy, Baroque - turgid, tentacular | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Worth repeating: "He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star." If I ever write a section of prose that good, I can die happy. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Des - in answer to the above...a mixture of both. And both examples apply, dependant on the talent of the writer in question. Again, it's all personal taste. There's room for both. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
That's an interesting point, mate. I was going to ask earlier whether folk thought that direct, simple words conveyed feelings in a more direct manner than those laden with literary artifice. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I'd say that Fitzgerald was ornate with image and thought, but brilliant. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
To me, a well written direct phrase can break my heart in more ways than something "laden with literary artifice". | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Fuck me, 323462735423 messages happened. I'm off for a lie down. >>>Again, it's all personal taste. There's room for both. Let's leave it at that. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
>>>To me, a well written direct phrase can break my heart in more ways than something "laden with literary artifice". Poetry just blows apart this whole debate. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I'd say that Fitzgerald was ornate with image and thought, but brilliant. See? It's all in the eye of the beholder. To me, FSG wrote clean, direct prose that went straight for the heart. "So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star." IMHO, there's nothing ornate about that killer line. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
"Poetry just blows apart this whole debate." No it doesn't; this debate is about prose, isn't it? Poetry is a different beast. Anyway, i also prefer my poetry lean and mean...  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Please go back to the Steiner in the first post above. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Poetic prose? Horror writers need poetic prose more than anyone else. It's in the Horror genes. Poe. Lovecraft, Henry James. Nothing beats it. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
OK. "Reacting against the excesses of Victorian manner, the modern writer has made a cult of simplicity. He refines common speech but preserves its essential drabness." I honestly don't see anything wrong with that. This Steiner chappie strikes me as a bit of a snob.  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Poetic prose isn't necassarily ornate or baroque, though, is it? To be honest, I find Henry James a bit of a chore...(eeek!) | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Ligotti? The Turn of The Screw? Poetic Prose is more ornate than it is not ornate. :-) | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.236.194 |
"To be honest, I find Henry James a bit of a chore...(eeek!)" The same thing occurred to me when I tried to get through James's THE GOLDEN BOWL. Interesting prose, but nearly every sentence is a philosophical tract on its own. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Ligotti's prose isn't ornate, he just uses too many words. ;-) (McMahon runs off, naked and giggling, rubbing the fragmented remains of a cheese pastie into his oddly hairless chest) | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.181.126 |
I agree with Des - all good writing should sing like good poetry, whether it's a Shakespearean sonnet or a haiku. So many writers I encounter today seem to have come to the conclusion that they are such due merely to the fact that they are capable of putting one word in front of the other. Anyone can get published today. In my view all good writing should be polished, possess a keen sense of the rhythm and flow of language, and show a real sense of conviction - Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Aickman and Lucius Shepard (to name just a few examples that come to mind) all display this in their work - and I believe that all the good writers have this ability and that it is this which ultimately sets them apart from the mediocre and the downright bad. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I couldn't agree more, Huw - I think we're all agreed on that. But ornate prose isn't necassarily good prose, nor does it always sing. A lot of ornate prose is clunky and self-conscious in just the same way that a lot of terse prose is barely functional, a string of words with no life. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Yes, Zed, but *generally* baroque prose is less impoverished than lean & hungry... AS PROSE. Meanwhile, *any* prose can be great fiction, whether it is 'lean & hungry' or 'baroque'. imho I still maintain (and I can cite many examples), that Joel Lane prose is nearer the 'baroque' end of the spectrum than the 'lean & hungry', and Salman Rushdie (whose work is also great) is *purely* baroque, I feel. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
"I still maintain (and I can cite many examples), that Joel Lane prose is nearer the 'baroque' end of the spectrum than the 'lean & hungry', and Salman Rushdie (whose work is also great) is *purely* baroque, I feel." I disagree. But if Rushdie is a definition of what you mean by baroque, then I enjoy that just as much as lean prose. Joel's prose is poetry: he can say in 3 words what it takes lesser authors an entire novella to express. Again, though, this entire debate rests on personal taste and personal definitions. Literature is something it's almost impossible to be objective about - there are too many emotive responses involved. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
IMHO, lean, terse prose has been given a bad name by writers who write functional prose because they are not capable of anything more. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I agree about tastes differing etc. But I find it hard to disagree with what *underlies* Steiner's (slightly pretentious, admittedly) passage written above as a general point. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
It seems a lifetime that I've been reading THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET by Salman Rushdie --- and its rite of passage seems tied up with my life, its ups and its downs. I finished it a few years ago. And I feel a different person as a result. It is a major work. Philosopical rock 'n roll! SF Alternate World novel. Magic Realism, too. Above all, insidious and cataclysmic at the same time. Tentacular syntax. Full of some wonderful characters. It is about music and *is* music. Here are some quotes from it that struck me (there are many more I could have chosen):-----"He stood on his imagination, on what he had conjured out of nowhere, what did not, could not, would not exist without him. Now that it had been made, he existed only within it. Having created this territory, he trusted no other ground".----“They lived in a great city, a metropolis of many narratives that converged briefly and then separated for ever, discovering their different dooms in that crowd of stories through which all of us, following our own destinies, had to push and shove to find our way through, or out.” ---- “But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.”-----It was a landmark book for the relatively recent turn of the Millennium. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Yep, great book. I read it when it first came out. I'm currently on with Midnight's Children, which is also quite breathtaking. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.192.35 |
I don't care that much whether the style is overly descriptive or spare - I can appreciate both, depending on the mood I'm in at a given time. I can read Poe, Tolkien or Cabell, and then turn to a pulp novel or noir, and I'll be equally happy with each of them as long as the quality of the writing is high. What matters is that it's done well. Any style (regardless of personal taste) can be horrendous in the hands of a hack. Some of the crap I see passed off as writing on certain other genre-related forums beggars belief. It's like flinging mud on a canvas and proclaiming oneself an artist. As one who believes in old-fashioned concepts such as literacy, talent, and the honing of one's craft, I find it distressing. I'm not saying that 'ornate' or 'baroque' prose is best, just that anyone considering himself a writer should have a good command of the language he's working in, at the very least. I'm constantly amazed at how many people proclaim themselves 'writer' or 'author' when it's glaringly obvious that they have no real feel for language, don't consider such things as grammar and range of vocabulary important, and have no discernible talent. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I agree with Huw above. BTW, I find with spare prose that I am left unsatisfied, however good I may recognise the book otherwise to be. I need traction or resistance to get my teeth into. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.192.35 |
Zed, I agree entirely with your comment above about 'functional' prose. So much of it seems to consist of clunky 'telling': "this happened, then that happened, then this... ". Basically, it's the grown-up equivalent of a "what did you do on your summer holiday?" school report. It makes me want to gouge my own eyes out sometimes... ;-) | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I couldn't agree more, Huw. I find myself despairing at some of the absolute shite that's published - particularly in the small press. Much like yourself, I enjoy good writing, whatever the style. However, my personal preference is for terse prose - as a reader, I appreciate its stark displine. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
This thread has run on very well and fairly since my last posting. Gary, I don't mean to confuse prose that is rich and complex with prose that is needlessly ornate. Poe, for example, wrote prose that was very rarely excessive – in the immortal words of Spike, it wasn't overkill, it was just enough kill. With some writers – and they can be writers of real talent and accomplishment, such as Clark Ashton Smith or C.L. Moore – I feel the style is sometimes interfering with the message, so that you have to tunnel through the shell of the prose to get to the edible kernel of the meaning. That doesn't make them bad writers, just flawed writers. Ligotti is capable of writing prose that is concise, resonant and painfully to the point. He's also capable of writing prose that is stilted and dry. It depends. Zed, I'm glad the three words I said to you that time in the Fantasycon bar were meaningful. So was the punch in the mouth you offered by way of response.  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
Wasn't it Thoreau who said that when the wrong people are in power, it's dangerous to be right? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
Sorry, that was meant for another thread! What's wrong with me? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Nothing that a good punch in the mouth wouldn't fix. ;-) | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
IMHO the current king of Baroque prose would be James Morrow. Sample quote "THE IRREDUCIBLE STRANGENESS of the universe was first made manifest to Anthony Van Horne on his fiftieth birthday, when a despondent angel named Raphael, a being with luminous white wings and a halo that blinked on and off like a neon quoit, appeared and told him of the days to come" Done with skill it works. I think I lean more to the terse prose side of things. But in certain cases I make the exception | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I don't find that example baroque at all... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.13.194 |
Des, judging by those passages quote from the Rushdie novel above - unfair to judge from a few snippets as it is, but just as fair to judge from such snippets, positively - I will be giving that novel an immensely wide berth in my meanderings through my local Borders Bookstore.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.13.194 |
... And where does writing style and thematic integrity blur, too? Some might describe Ramsey's writing-sytle as baroque, but (imho) he's long been writing stories set in a particular "Universe": where all objects and actions are imbued with a consciousness, a symbolism, or an intelligent design, often paranoid or malevolent. It reveals a Roman Catholic-taint, marvelously translated: nothing is accidental, or meaningless, down to trash rolling around in the street - consciousness (the POV of Campbell's protagonists) imposes itself upon everything, desperate to uncover a meaning, seeing meanings where they're not, until (his usual story catharsis) objective meanings are finally disocvered - horrifically so. This design precludes "style." Hemingway-esque prose would be wholly innappropriate here, but so would deliberately-imposed baroque stylings - this simply is the Universe that Campbell sets his stories within, with its resultant/erupting story style; and we're taking it as baroque, or lush, or not, or whatever. The same goes for all the others...? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Wherever one's taste falls upon the spectrum ranging from over-ornate to over-spare, it is certain that that spectrum exists. In recent decades, the spareness end of the spectrum (as indicated by the Steiner quote in the first post) has been the cornerstone of fiction. But why? Because it is intrinsically better? More effective for the clarity of didacticism, the conveyance of thrills and/or plots etc? Common denominator for fiction produced by mass market publishers? I don't know the answer. As an aside, I agree that some writers (such as Ramsey) can transcend the spectrum altogether, but they are probably exceptions, not the rule. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
This is pretty baroque thread in itself! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.236.194 |
I can appreciate both approaches - a quasi-hysterical Lovecraft telling me that there are cosmic implications I cannot fathom, as well as a cool and compassionate Bradbury who never even mentions the word 'implication', but offers me a three-word sentence full of shuddersome intimation. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
MG Cardin has made an interesting contribution to this debate on the above Steiner quote: http://shocklinesforum.yuku.com/sreply/56738/t/Baroque-Prose--prose--impoverishe d--Hemingway-et-al-.html | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
In a recent review, someone described my prose as comprete Baroques. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I'm going broke for baroque. I hope they can baroquer a peace deal in Georgia. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Let's hope Baroque Obama can help them out. Wait wait. I need to think of one for B A Baroque-us. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
I ain't gettin on no plane, sucker fool! | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 77.86.104.231 |
okaaay. I had a thought on the way here. Baroque often melds werll with cold wordiness: like Ligotti. I find his cold wordiness helps to tame his baroqueness. No? Take that apart and turn it into a tank, B A. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
Good point, Albie. It's a bit like Niles Crane when he's really pissed off. (Note to self: that's not really how to get the blurb-writing gig for the next Ligotti book.) | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Horror and Baroque seem to go together, like the incense-cones in a sick-room. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 77.86.104.231 |
Are you also in to scones? |