Anodyne
Thursday, July 05, 2007
 

Summer reading. Full of the narative pull and finely planed sentences characterizing King's more realistic work. A book I've been waiting to read; a clear, lucid voice remembered from a long time ago that only emerges intermittently now: in the excellent autobiographical On Writing; in some of the short stories collected in Everything's Eventual; in Four Past Midnight's "The Sun Dog," and a few other places.

A sample of Blaze's plain clear prose:

"The Bowies watched him go over to the chopping block and free the ax. He looked at it, then stood in the dust beside the block. Dogs ran and yapped ceaselessly. The smallest Collies were the shrillest.

'Well?' Bowie asked.

'Sir, I ain't never chopped wood.'

Bowie dropped the zipper bag in the dust. He walked over and set a maple chunk on the chopping block. He spat in one palm, clapped his hands together and picked up the ax. Blaze watched closely. Bowie brought the blade down. The chunk fell in two pieces.

'There,' he said. 'Now they're stovelengths.'"
- posted by cjb @ 7:02 PM


<< Home

Powered by Blogger

.post-title { display: none!important; }