“Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.”
Hmmm, are there many of us left who prize the poet living within the novelist and the magical dance with language to which they treat us?
I don’t often write about the art of writing. I’m always a bit reluctant to wade into the subject. All forms of art are highly personal. What is brilliant in one person’s eyes can be mediocre in the eyes of another.
The paragraph at the top of this post, the opening lines from Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, is my hands-down favourite opening of a novel. Kingsolver is one of my favourite writers in large part because of her elegant and poetic narrative voice.
The majority of novelists in this era are primarily storytellers. I don’t mean that in a pejorative way. Engaging storytelling is a critical component of a good novel. But a novelist’s facility with language, the ability to weave magic with it and paint compelling mental pictures, is what brings a novel to life for me.
The opening lines from Donna Morrissey’s Downhill Chance are another glowing example. Morrissey is an east coast, Canadian writer with a distinctive voice and a rare gift for infusing language with passion and visual brilliance.
“It was a dirty old night that washed Gid O’Mara up on the shores of Rocky Head. Sheila’s Brush, the old-timers called it, that late-spring storm that comes with the fury of February winds, transfiguring the desolate rock island of Newfoundland into a great whale soaring out of the Atlantic, shaking and writhing as if to rid itself of the shacks, wharves and boats clinging to its granite shores like barnacles.”
You just know when you read those opening lines that the novel is going to be a literary masterpiece with images and emotions that leap off the page. There are those who will assert that this is self-indulgent writing. I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.
The novelist I most admire, and most aspire to emulate (although I doubt I will ever come close to doing so), is southern U.S. novelist David Payne. He combines a remarkable facility with language with gifted storytelling that makes me linger over every page. Don’t take my word for it. Let the opening lines of his novel Gravesend Light speak for him.
“Cracking the hawser like a sluggish whip, Joe Madden shook off the row of icicles that had formed like murderous tinsel overnight and leaped aboard, his steps ringing on the already moving boat. Above him in the bow, Jubal Ames, in aviator glasses, red hair stiff as a wire brush, loomed through the tinted lexan windows of the wheelhouse.”
It is difficult these days to find novelists who demonstrate mastery over language and the ability to bend it to their will. I’ll go so far as to say that many writers who are published these days are notably lacking in this regard.
One of the tools of this style of writing – you knew I was going to say it – is the skillful use of metaphor. It is fast becoming a lost art. I’m grateful to the small group of gifted novelists who labour to keep it alive.
A literary world without metaphor would be a barren place for those of us still in love with it. Call me old school if you must for hanging on to this dying art form. I’ll take it as a compliment even if it was not intended that way.
~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.
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Tags: Barbara Kingsolver · David Payne · Donna Morrissey · Downchill Chance · Gravesend Light · metaphor · Michae Robert Dyet · Prodigal SummerNo Comments