“Pretty good stuff that Vladamir guy had, wasn’t it? And that’s no translation-he wrote that in English, even though Russian was his mother tongue. And almost without fail, my little green-eyed gremlin sidles up to me, hops up on my shoulder, and starts his vulgar whispering. And whenever I read mind-blowing writing, I inexplicably find myself not just appreciating it a as a reader, but trying to reverse engineer the stuff, pick it apart and diagnose exactly how the writer was able to create something so hilarious, painful, brilliant, sublime, whatever. People sometimes complain about how lousy some of the published prose out there is, and maybe it’s not all top notch, sure, but over and over, I find myself awed by what fantastic writing I do encounter, old and new. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Especially if you’re eating a Pop Tart at the same time.įrom the very first lines in Lolita, you know you’re in for a great ride: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. I have to remind myself not to drink anything anytime I read the irreverent, profane, goofy, and fantastic tangents Tom Robbins allows himself, because laughing milk out your nose hurts like hell. I’m amazed by the despair and pain Samuel Beckett can capture in minute changes to repetition, how he can take the most stripped down language and still imbue it with such stricken feeling and portent. I’m repeatedly struck by similar thoughts in a lot of my reading adventures. End even though I’ve reread the dang scene 100 times if I’ve read it once, I still marvel at it. It’s full of juxtapositions and jagged edges and yet still builds this fascinating rhythm, powerful and almost hypnotic. There’s a scene in Blood Meridian where a veritable horde of Comanche are galloping down on the terror-stricken main characters (who, I should note, really have it coming to them), and the description goes on for days in Faulknerian fashion with nary a punctuation mark to be seen, and yet it’s as exact and precise a piece of prose as you can hope to find, brimming with exquisite details that are equal parts beautiful and horrifying.
Meanwhile, I already have a wonderful treat to offer: a guest post by author Jeff Salyards about writer’s jealousy, entitled Green-Eyed Gremlin.
I’ll post the entire review here soon, but for now, you can read it at Tor.com.
My review of Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff Salyards went up at Tor.com today.
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