Good writing in any genre is...

[ffreak]

Just finished a great read by Pearl Cleage and wanted to share what I think is a great paragraph.

(Add your favorite bits from stories or books to this thread)

"And then it was done, official, and the party could begin in earnest. And it did. And we danced too wild, and we sang too long, and we hugged too hard, and we kissed too sweet, and threw back our heads and howled just as loud as we wanted to howl, because by now we were all old enough to know that what looks like crazy on an ordinary day, looks like love if you catch it in the moonlight."

for all the lovely ladies I've met here on Lit.

ps. I didn't forget the title, it's in the quote.

 

[Guest]

Lovely idea, Eff. I reread Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev's novella, First Love about once a year. It's like a long poem, like a favorite film in my mind's eye. The story takes place in a sixteen year old boy's summer in the country. The first paragraph is an intro, the second among my favorite among all I've ever read.

From chapter 1:
“I remember that at that time the image of woman, the shadowy vision of feminine love, scarcely ever took definite shape in my mind: but in every thought, in every sensation, there lay hidden a half-conscious, shy, timid awareness of something new, inexpressibly sweet, feminine. This presentiment, this sense of expectancy, penetrated my whole being; I breathed it, it was in every drop of blood that flowed through my veins—soon it was to be fulfilled.”

After his first meeting with a young woman of infinite variety, several years his senior and never to be his, the boy stays up all night gazing out his bedroom window toward her neighboring house. His long reverie ends with this small paragraph; I emphasize my favorite phrase which is how I have experienced love.

From chapter 7:
“Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love—where are you? Where are you?”

Penguin Classics edition; tr. by Isaiah Berlin; reprinted 1986.

 

[Jenny _S]

Lovely idea, Eff. I reread Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev's novella, First Love about once a year. It's like a long poem, like a favorite film in my mind's eye. The story takes place in a sixteen year old boy's summer in the country. The first paragraph is an intro, the second among my favorite among all I've ever read.

From chapter 1:
“I remember that at that time the image of woman, the shadowy vision of feminine love, scarcely ever took definite shape in my mind: but in every thought, in every sensation, there lay hidden a half-conscious, shy, timid awareness of something new, inexpressibly sweet, feminine. This presentiment, this sense of expectancy, penetrated my whole being; I breathed it, it was in every drop of blood that flowed through my veins—soon it was to be fulfilled.”

After his first meeting with a young woman of infinite variety, several years his senior and never to be his, the boy stays up all night gazing out his bedroom window toward her neighboring house. His long reverie ends with this small paragraph; I emphasize my favorite phrase which is how I have experienced love.

From chapter 7:
“Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love—where are you? Where are you?”

Penguin Classics edition; tr. by Isaiah Berlin; reprinted 1986.

Ms P,
You never cease to amaze me with your deep pockets of literary knowledge.

 

[Guest]

Jenny S:

Read "First Love"; doesn't take all that much to have deep pockets.

Perdita

 

[Icingsugar]

From chapter 7:
“Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love—where are you? Where are you?”

About love, I have but one quote. The really sad part is that I have no idea of where it's from. I just saw the quote once, and loved it to bits. Have anoyone of you seen this in a book?:

"There are things to be said about love. In fact, there have been so many things said about love ever since the day Ogg and Ack climbed out of the trees, hand in hand, at the dawn of man, that it is almost silly. Countless bards and storytellers have spellbound audiences with their own description of the phenomena. Through the centuries, the greatest of writers and the boldest of poets have ached letters into words, words into sentences and sentences into tales of the adventures of the heart. From Shakespeare to Maquis de Sade. From Sapfo to Larry Flynt. Legends, ballads, epics, punk rock songs, secret letters, motion pictures and Harlequin drivel.

So basically, everyone and their mother have tried to describe love. Everyone and their mother are fucking idiots."

Sorry to break the illusion, but that is just so damn true.

 

[raphy]

Unfortunately, to post the entirety of Chapter 2 of Spider Robinson's _Mindkiller_ would be .. impractical. But, God is an iron - And you can read it at http://www.dextromethorphan.ws/godisaniron.htm if you're particularly interested..

Outside of that, I don't really have a favourite short piece of literary work...

 

[Guest]

Sorry to break the illusion, but that is just so damn true.

You can't break my illusions, Raphy. They have been shattered from time to time, but they always return.

Also, just want to welcome you. I've enjoyed reading your posts.

regards, Perdita

 

[ffreak]

Oh, Perdita, dear, always painting pictures with your words and saying so much with your pictures.

"She is a friend of my mind... The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order."
-Toni Morrison

 

[raphy]

*innocent look*

I wasn't trying to break anyone's illusions, honest!

Perdita.. perdita.. Carpe Jugulum...

 

[Guest]

Perdita.. perdita.. Carpe Jugulum...

You're a smooth one, Raph.

 

[Guest]

Oh, Perdita, dear, always painting pictures with your words and saying so much with your pictures.

Eff, this will be confusing in a day but the AV is a drawing by Modigliani of Anna Akhmatova, my favorite Russian poet. In life she looked like a Modigliani. They were lovers briefly in Paris.

Perdita

 

[raphy]

You're a smooth one, Raph.

Aww... Not really, I just think Pratchett is a God amongst men..

 

[Guest]

Aww... Not really, I just think Pratchett is a God amongst men..

Ha, ha! I've found no gods amongst men, myself, but women, plenty.

Perdita

 

[ffreak]

I thought those were called Goddesses, Goddess.

ps. You have such wonderful taste, Suculence.

 

[MathGirl]

Writing good

Terry Pratchett may be partly a comedian, but his dialog(ue) is as tightly written as any I've read:
----------------
By gor' that's a bloody enormous cat."

"It's a lion," said Granny Weatherwax, looking at the stuffed head over the fireplace.

"Must've hit the wall at a hell of a speed, whatever it was," said Nanny Ogg.

"Someone killed it," said Granny, surveying the room.

"Should think so," said Nanny. "If I'd seen something like that eatin' its way through the wall, I'd of hit it myself with the poker."
---------------
Pratchett's descriptions are also both funny and well written:
----------------
Granny disapproved of magic for domestic purposes, but she was annoyed. She also wanted her tea.

She threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment.
------------------
From "Witches Abroad"
MG

 

[ffreak]

Love that last one:
they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment.

 

[raphy]

With MG all the way.. Pratchett's dialogue is consistently sharp, acerbic and tight.

Death? Tall, skeletal, TALKS LIKE THIS. Seen him?

 

[MathGirl]

GEOG, COME WITH ME.
Mort

 

[raphy]

Had to double-take, but I'm getting used to that now.... Geog.. Pornog.. Cartog..

 

[Icingsugar]

Re: Writing good

She threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment.
------------------
From "Witches Abroad"
MG

Yeah, Pratchett know his stuff.

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.
(From 'Soul Music', I think.)

 

[Guest]

Bump

I am disappointed more excerpts have not been posted. I’ll take the opportunity to do so again.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, by Elizabeth Smart (1945) - 'sings' of Smart's love affair with the poet George Barker. She fell obsessively in love wtih him through his work before meeting him. They never married or lived together but over the years she bore him four children.

From a foreword by Brigid Brophy, with which I agree:
“I doubt if there are more than half a dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world. One of them, I am convinced, is [By Grand Central Station]. . . [It] is one of the most shelled, skinned, nerve-exposed books ever written. It is a cry of complete vulnerability.”

Two favorite paras near each other—

“He kissed my forehead driving along the coast in evening, and now, wherever I go, like the sword of Damocles, that greater never-to-be-given kiss hangs above my doomed head. He took my hand between the two shabby front seats of the Ford, and it was dark, and I was looking the other way, but now that hand casts everywhere an octopus shadow from which I can never escape. The tremendous gentleness of that moment smothers me under; all through the night it is centaurs hoofed and galloping over my heart: the poison has got into my blood.”

“I am over-run, jungled in my bed, I am infested with a menagerie of desires: my heart is eaten by a dove, a cat scrambles in the cave of my sex, hounds in my head obey a whipmaster who cries nothing but havoc as the hours test my endurance with an accumulation of tortures. Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic order?”

 

[ffreak]

OK, now I have to go get the book.

Well I still have 7 hours before sleep. Could make a good start.

Publishers should hire you to write their adversiting copy for them. They'd sell a lot more of their titles.

 

[Seattle Zack]

I grew up on Mickey Spillaine and John D. MacDonald so I read a lot of crime fiction -- Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassen, Lawrence Block. Another of my favorites is Stephen Hunter, who's also the film critic for the Baltimore Sun. One of the best opening paragraphs I've ever read is the beginning to his novel Dirty White Boys:

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all. His was the largest penis ever seen on a white man in that prison or any of the others in which Lamar had spent so much of his adult life. It was a monster, a snake, a ropey, veiny thing that hardly looked at all like what it was but rather like some form of rubber tubing.

Quite a read, if you like crime novels.

--Zack

 

[MathGirl]

My, my. Thay guy could give our own BlackSnake some lessons in wiwi praising.
MG

 

[gauchecritic]

Ever since I first heard it on Monty Python's "Novel writing from Dorset" sketch I have forever been in love with Thomas Hardy's first line from (I think) "Return Of The Native.“

A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.

How could you possibly open a novel with those words and even hope to equal them anywhere else?

Gauche