I've been on holiday long enough (and have recovered from the strains of Xmas enough) to start reading more than just whodunits. Came across this wonderful paragraph today on reading and writing (and sentence construction) by an Australian writer, Kevin Brophy, in a book called, The Writer's Reader: A Guide to Writing Fiction and Poetry, edited by Brenda Walker, Halstead Press, 2007. Worth quoting in full.
"Prose lies on the page before us as the sea lies under a great bird flying from continent to continent. The sentence is no more a distinct unit of language than the wave is distinct from the ocean. Sentences of prose move down the page in lines like the waves of the Pacific moving on to the Australian shoreline. They are a surface phenomenon; they tell us something about what might be happening under the surface; they have their own storms and moods; we read them because that is where we birds moving from the continent of birth to the continent of death must feed off what is swimming just below those waves." (p34)
Interesting paragraph, and I like the use of above and beneath the waves as the text/subtext relationship. Great stories often feed us most with what is just beneath the waves.
ReplyDeletelove this quote, trisha.
ReplyDeletei also love the fact that i'm not the only one just now surfacing from whodunnits. ;-)
contemplating...thanks for the stimulation
ReplyDelete