A lot of us–I suspect most of us–are readers, by which I mean lovers of books and stories for their own sake. Sometimes what draws us to a story is the clever plot, or the incisive characterization; but just as often, I think it is the power and the eloquence of the author’s words.
Let’s share them.
What I propose is this. Name an author you love and then identify a work–book, short story, or essay–by himor her which you find particularly memorable. It can be funny or sad, pithy or eloquent; it doesn’t matter, as long as you think the passage noteworthy. If you’re so inclined, include publication information or a link to where others may buy the book in question, but if don’t want to bother, don’t feel obliged to. Having identified author and work, the poster should then quote a brief passage–try to keep it to under a hundred words or so–that exemplifies why you love this writer. It can be from the beginning, the end, or anywhere in between.
Once you’ve quoted your hundred words, stop. Don’t give context, don’t explain your choice, don’t mock the previous posters’ taste in literature: just trust in the words you’re quoting.
I should probably start, huh? I’m going with Valerie Martin, from the title short story in her collection The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories:
She wasn’t certain [the rat] wouldn’t seek her out again, but, she thought, he would never again seek her out in that particular form. His menace had quite gone out of that form; she had seen it with her own eyes. Her father had discarded the pieces of the rat’s body without anger; he had even commented on the creature’s remarkable size, taking,Lily had observed, some comfort in having defeated so formidable an enemy. Now that he was a danger to no one, the rat possessed the power to be marvelous.
*
No-one would have believed, in the final years of the Century of the Fruitbat, that Discworld affairs were being watched keenly and impatiently by intelligences greater than Man’s, or at least much nastier; that their affairs were being scrutinised and studied as a man with a three-day appetite might study the All-You-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar menu outside Harga’s House of Ribs…
To keep it under 100 words, I’m deleting the two paragraphs before this one, describing the birth of two girl babies.
Then, two years after Carolyn, a stern little boy was born, thin and red-haired like his father, and they named him Douglas. They had not wanted more than two children, but because the first two had been girls they had decided to try once more. Even if the third had also been a girl, they would have let it go at that; there would have been no sense in continuing what would soon become amusing to other people.
“A pair of predatory-looking Christian Scientists were edging toward a trio of young office techs who wore idealized holographic vaginas on their wrists, wet pink glittering under the harsh lighting. The techs licked their perfect lips nervously and eyed the Christian Scientists from beneath lowered metallic lids. The girls looked like tall, exotic grazing animals, swaying gracefully and unconsciously with the movement of the train, their high heels like polished hooves against the gray metal of the car’s floor. Before they could stampede, take flight from the missionaries, the train reached Case’s station.”
–William Gibson, Neuromancer
And this opening paragraph convinced me to buy Glasshouse, by Charles Stross. Nearly every word reveals some new information:
“A dark-skinned human with four arms walks toward me across the floor of the club, clad only in a belt strung with human skulls. Her hair forms a smoky wreath around her open and curious face. She’s interested in me.”
from The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson:
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
As the OP, I’ll rule that you did not QUITE violate the rule against giving context, even you bumped up against it; what you did was not substantially different than what I did in changing the word “animals” in the orignal to a bracketed [rats] so the paragraph read more smoothy.
[George carlin]
These are my rules. I make them up.
[/quote]
A little more information and I’d be on wonderlust’s side, but you’re cool and still get pie.
I mentioned that everybody who contributes to the thread gets a slice of my no-bake cheesecake, right?
I confess my shame at inferring the thread rules rather than reading them. Horrified that I had unwittingly defiled this fine “experiment in form”, I then deflected the blame. I am not worthy. <bowing smilie>
I have to say I’m very frustrated because one of my favorite passages ever is closer to two hundred words. sigh Let’s see if it still works… no. You’ll just have to trust me that the best passage that Douglas Adams ever wrote is 263 words long, and thus way too long for this thread.
I’ll give some Tolkien instead; this one is a bit closer to the 100 word mark.
From The Two Towers:
‘Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,’ he said slowly, ‘likely enouh that we are going to our doom: the last march fo the Ents. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song. Aye,’ he sighed, ‘we may help the other peoples before we pass away. Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true about the Entwives. I should dearly have liked to see Fimbrethil agaiin. But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.’
And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.
“Remnants dear to me
While god and fate allowed it, take this breath
And give me respite from these agonies.
I lived my life out to the very end
And passed the stages Fortune had appointed.
Now my tall shade goes to the under world.
I built a famous city, saw my great walls,
Avenged my husband, made my hostile brother
Pay for his crime. Happy, alas, too happy,
If only the Dardanian keels had never
Beached on our coast.” And here she kissed the bed.
“I die unavenged,” she said, “but let me die.
This way, this way, a blessed relief to go
Into the undergloom. Let the cold Trojan,
Far at sea, drink in this conflagration
And take with him the omen of my death!”