interiors

from Jeffrey Eugenides, "Great Experiment" in The New Yorker (2008)

Shabby living conditions wouldn't have bothered Kendall in the old days. He'd liked the converted barns and under-heated garage apartments Stephanie and he had lived in before they were married, and he liked the just appreciably nicer apartments in questionable neighborhoods they lived in after they were married. His sense of their marriage as countercultural, an artistic alliance committed to the support of vinyl records and Midwestern literary quarterlies, had persisted even after Max and Eleanor were born. Hadn't the Brazilian hammock as diaper table been an inspired idea? And the poster of Beck gazing down over the crib, covering the hole in the wall?

. . .

From the street, as he approached under the dark, dripping trees, his house looked impressive enough. The lawn was ample. Two stone urns flanked the front steps, leading up to a wide porch. Except for paint peeling under the eaves, the exterior looked fine. It was with the interior that the trouble began. If fact, the trouble began with the word itself: interior. Stephanie like to use it. The design magazines she consulted were full of it. One was even called it: Interiors. But Kendall had his doubts as to whether their home achieved an authentic state of interiority. For instance, the outside was always breaking in. Rain leaked through the ceiling. The sewers flooded up through the basement drain.

the poison dart of my personal angel of death

from Albert Goldbarth, "How I Want to Go," in Combinations of the Universe (2003)

1.
One way would be
almost without transition: water,
rising out of water,
as water, isn't aware of the moment
(well, there isn't "a" moment) it turns
to air.
          But a letter from Rich, which came today
from brambled Scottish highland, says
that the hawk can sense exactly where
the rabbit's heart is beating--is an aerothermal
system of pinpoint location--
"then it stamps its talon into the heart,
as easily as an olive is speared."
So that would be another way:
the poison dart of my personal angel
of death come down to lift me.

. . .
3.
EMO! [eey-mo]: what, one year, the "cool guys"
(jerks) in junior high kept yelling in the hallways
and covertly inking over the walls: acronymically,
Eat Me Out. It made no sense to me. First,
wasn't this command what the woman would say, not the man?
Was this supposed to be some witticism put forth
ventriloquially? And second, cunnilingus was desirable,
a pleasure--yes? Then why did this utterance
enter the world as if it were an insult? That year,
everything was confusing.
                                            For example, my Aunt Regina
was dying, making her departure
an ordeal of miscued neural paths
and failed speech, as measured in extra millimeters
per day of unstoppable, hardening cells. The cancer,
one of the doctors shrugged and said, was eating out her brain.

the revolutionary spirit(s)

from Sean O'Casey, The Plough and the Stars (1926)

(PETER and FLUTHER enter tumultuously. They are hot, and full and hasty with the things they have seen and heard. Emotion is bubbling up in them, so that when they drink, and when they speak, they drink and speak with the fullness of emotional passion [...])

PETER (hurriedly to the BARMAN). Two more, Tom!...(To FLUTHER) Th' memory of all th' things that was done, an' all th' things that was suffered be th' people, was boomin' in me brain....Every nerve in me body was quiverin' to do somethin' desperate!

FLUTHER. Jammed as I was in th' crowd, I listed to th' speeches pattherin' on th' people's head, like rain fallin' on th' corn; every derogatory thought went out o' me mind, an' I said to meself, "You can die now, Fluther, for you've seen the shadow-dhreams of th' past leppin' to life in th' bodies of livin' men that show, if we were without a thitther o' courage for centuries, we're vice versa now!" Looka here. (He stretches out his arm under PETER'S face and rolls up his sleeve.) The blood was BOILIN' in me veins!

the audacity of thought

from Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

[Ahab speaking]: " What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon the world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that."

her moments

from Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (2007)

She'd come at just the right time. This was her atmosphere. This was the light for her, for sad, pale skin below the tanned neck and above the rough elbows, for a virgin martyr's poise, for her unexpectant waiting--her right calf, rather thick and like a peasant's, dangling from the bed and the foot plunged into shadow near the floor, which was of old wood, the other leg akimbo and the sole of its foot against the other knee, making a number 4 with her legs as she lay back on the bed, her hand across her breasts, the other behind her head--pond-light, church-light. Had she known how he stared, she'd never have allowed it. But she turned her eyes to him and looked at him full on as if he didn't matter, without any change of her expression. She wasn't, herself, beautiful. Her moments were beautiful.

those smug adult prefaces

from Steven Millhauser, Edwin Mullhouse (1972)

Preface to the First Edition

Edwin Mullhouse is dead. I shall not qualify the noun of his memory with the insolent adjectives of insufficient praise. Edwin Mullhouse is dead. He is as dead as a doornail.

I have studied them carefully, those smug adult prefaces. With fat smiles of gratitude, fit thanks are given for services rendered and kindnesses bestowed. Long lists of names are cleverly paraded in order to assure you that the author has excellent connections and a loving heart. Let me say at once that in this instance there are none to thank to besides myself. I am not thankful to Dr. and Mrs. Mullhouse for moving away with the remains. I am not thankful to Aunt Gladys for mislaying eleven chapters. I have always done my own typing myself, using both index fingers, and I have never received any encouragement at all from anyone about anything. And so, in conclusion, I feel that grateful thanks are due to myself, without whose kind encouragement and constant interest I could never have completed my task; to myself, for my valuable assistance in a number of points, whose patience, understanding, and usefulness as a key eye-witness can never be adequately repaid, and who in a typical burst of scrupulousness wish to point out that the 'remains' mentioned above are, of course, literary remains.

J.C.
Newfield, 1955

this country will kill you in a heartbeat

from Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (2005)

She never did remarry. Later years she was a schoolteacher. San Angelo. This country was hard on people. But they never seemed to hold it to account. In a way that seems peculiar. That they didnt. You think about what all has happened to just this one family. I dont know what I'm doin here still knockin around. All them young people. We dont know where half of them is even buried. You got to ask what was the good in all that. So I go back to that. How come people dont feel like this country has got a lot to answer for? They dont. You can say that the country is just the country, it dont actively do nothin, but that dont mean much. I seen a man shoot his pickup truck with a shotgun one time. He must of thought it done somethin. This country will kill you in a heartbeat and people still love it. You understand what I'm saying?

I think I do. Do you love it?

I guess you could say I do. But I'd be the first one to tell you I'm as ignorant as a box of rocks so you sure dont want to go by nothin I'd say.

the nightly obliteration of being

from Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie (1960) trans. Daniel Russell (1969)

The night dream (rêve) does not belong to us. It is not our possession. With regard to us, it is an abductor, the most disconcerting of abductors: it abducts our being from us. Nights, nights have no history. They are not linked one to another. And when a person has lived a lot, when he has already lived some twenty-thousand nights, he never knows in which ancient, very ancient night he started off to dream. The night has no future. 
...
We become elusive to ourselves, for we are giving pieces of ourselves to no matter whom, to no matter what. The nocturnal dream disperses our being over phantoms of unusual beings who are no longer even shadows of ourselves. The words "phantoms" and "shadows" are too strong. They are still too well attached to realities. They prevent us from going as far as the extremity of the obliteration of being, as far as the obscurity of our being dissolving into the night.

in which pore men be but the lokers on

from Thomas More, The History of King Richard III (ca. 1515)

[the context: Richard and Buckingham, in engineering their takeover of the realm, have staged a scene in which Buckingham, before a large group of citizens, offers Richard the crown several times, but he bashfully refuses--until he is compelled by the shouts of 'the people' (not really the citizens, but their hired plants in the crowd).]

With this there was a great shout, crying kyng Richarde king Richard. And then the lordes went up to the kyng (for so was he from that time called) and the people departed, talkyng diversly of the matter every man as his fantasye gave hym. But muche they talked and marveiled of the maner of this dealing, that the matter was on both partes made so straunge, as though neither had ever communed with the other thereof before, when that themselves wel wist there was no man so dul that heard them, but he perceived wel inough, that all the matter was made betwene them. Howbeit somme excused that agayne, and sayde all must be done in good order though. And men must sometime for the manner sake not bee a knowen what they knowe. For at the consecracion of a bishop, every man woteth well by the paying for his bulles, that he purposeth to be one, & though he paye for nothing elles. And yet must he bee twise asked whyther he wil be bishop or no, and he muste twyse say naye, and at the third tyme take it as compelled ther unto by his owne wyll.

And in a stage play all the people know right wel, that he that playeth the sowdayne is percase as sowter. [that is, the actor playing the sultan is actually a shoemaker]. Yet if one should have so little sense to shewe out of seasonne what acquaintance he hath with him, and calle him by his owne name whyle he standeth in his magestie, one of his tormentors might hap to break his head, and worth[il]y [so] for marring of the play. And so they said that these matters bee Kynges games, as it were stage playes, and for the more part plaied upon scafoldes. In which pore men be but the lokers on. And thei that wise be, wil medle no farther. For they that sometyme step up and play with them, when they cannot play their partes, they disorder the play & do themselves no good.

support our troops

from Benjamin Percy, Refresh Refresh (2007)

Our fathers had left us, but men remained in Tumalo. There were old men, like my grandfather, who I lived with--men who had paid their dues, who had worked their jobs and fought their wars, and now spent their days at the gas station, drinking bad coffee from Styofoam cups, complaining about the weather, arguing about the best months to reap alfalfa. And there were incapable men. Men who rarely shaved and watched daytime television in their once-white underpants. Men who lived in trailers and filled their shopping carts with Busch Light, summer sausage, Oreo cookies.

And then there were vulturous men, like Dave Lightener--men who scavenged whatever our fathers had left behind. Dave Lightener worked as a recruitment officer. I'm guessing he was the only recruitment officer in world history who drive a Vespa scooter with a Support Our Troops ribbon magneted to the rear. We sometimes saw it parked outside the homes of young women whose husbands had gone to war. Dave had big ears and small eyes and wore his hair in your standard-issue high-and-tight buzz. He often spoke in a too-loud voice about all the insurgents he gunned down when working in a Fallujah patrol unit. He lived with his mother in Tumalo, but spent his days in Bend and Redmond, trolling the parking lots of Best Buy, ShopKo, Kmart, Wal-Mart, Mountain View Mall. He was looking for people like us, people who were angry and dissatisfied and poor.

But Dave Lightener knew better than to bother us. On duty he stayed away from Tumalo entirely. Recruiting there would be too much like poaching the burned section of forest where deer, rib-slatted and wobbly legged, nosed through the ash, seeking something green.

many are the dericks

from Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard form the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so similar to the sperm whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.

how I, or you, or we, might feel, sometimes

from Italo Calvino, The Road to San Giovanni trans. Tim Parks (1993)

For the brief span of our lifetimes, everything remains there on the screen, distressingly present; the first images of eros and premonitions of death catch up with us in every dream; the end of the world began with us and shows no signs of ending; the film we thought we were watching is the story of our lives.

click and flow (or peck and stare?)

from William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (1935, 2000)

Do not overwrite.
Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating. If the sickly-sweet word, the overblown phrase are your natural form of expression, as is sometimes the case, you will have to compensate for it by a show of vigor, and by writing something as meritorious as the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's.

When writing with a computer, you must guard against wordiness. The click and flow of a word processor can be seductive, and you may find yourself adding a few unnecessary words or even a whole passage just to experience the pleasure of running your fingers over the keyboard and watching your words appear on the screen. It is always a good idea to reread your writing later and ruthlessly delete the excess.

Do not affect a breezy manner.
The volume of writing is enormous, these days, and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. 'Spontaneous me,' said Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribblers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius.

The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that comes to mind is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day. . . .

sleeping away from home

from Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)

Even being lied to constantly, though hardly like love, was sustained attention; he must care about her to fabricate so elaborately and over such a long stretch of time. His deceit was a form of tribute to the importance of their marriage.