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billybrobby
Joined: 09 Dec 2004
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 Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:04 pm Post subject: Moments where a writer goes for broke |
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In certain books, there are passages where a writer seems to lay it all on the line, seems to be pushing to make a break-through and really communicate something profound about the world around us. Sometimes these moments are brilliant and sometimes they kinda suck, but it's always nice to see somebody try.
I'll give you 2 examples (both of which deal with water and the American dream, for some reason):
| Hunter S. Thompson wrote: |
San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were here and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time � and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights � or very early mornings � when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle � that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn�t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting � on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark � that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. |
| F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: |
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes -- a fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And, as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning --
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. |
It's kind of exhilarating to read either of these passages, especially in the context of their respective books. They are quoted a lot. Does anybody else have any to share? (try googling a few key words from them if you don't have the text) |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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I'd have many to add, my fav. author Bohumil Hrabal almost goes for broke with every sentence.
But I'll share one of my other favourites, lots of stirring stuff in Tropic of Cancer besides the poorly written sexual stuff. This passage also speaks about what you are commenting on, when an author goes for broke, struggles and succeeds....
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Henry Miller, Whitmanian passage from Tropic of Cancer
So true is it that I am almost tempted to say: "Show me a man who over-elaborates and I will show you a great man!" What is called their "over-elaboration" is my meat: it is the sign of the struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit. And when you show me a man who expresses himself perfectly I will not say that he is not great, but I will say that I am unattracted . . . . I miss the cloying qualities. When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears. |
DD |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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| James Joyce wrote: |
| Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. |
I love how the description of the falling snow here builds to the alternation, "falling faintly" and "faintly falling," with the words suggesting such lightness, but in the context of the story and so much repetition, so much weight.
| Kurt Vonnegut wrote: |
Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.
And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now -- of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust. |
Here, you can feel the sadness build to anger in "my government" and a rebellion against the resignation of "So it goes" in "They rust." We do not have to accept fate, but can makes choices and act in the world.
EDIT: Quotes and typos fixed |
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Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
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| Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
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Jack Kerouac, "On The Road" |
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seoulsucker
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Location: The Land of the Hesitant Cutoff
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| Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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"If you're going to read this, don't bother."
-Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
We wanted to blast the world free of history.... picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.
-Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club |
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cwemory
Joined: 14 Jan 2006
Location: Gunpo, Korea
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 1:13 am Post subject: |
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Joyce's Dubliners has moments like that in every story. Woland's already mentioned my favourite, so instead i'll mention Araby:
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| Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. |
what a beautiful way to say life's not fair. |
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ChopChaeJoe
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:56 am Post subject: |
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Some pretty memorable quotes. I don't think they are oing for broke though.
That seems to imply some kind of cut-away fom the norm of what they did to get where they are. Using carefully collected capital for the chance to throw it all away in a gamble.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, Twain's Huck Finn, and Thomas Hardy's Tess do the trick on that account. Maybe Salinger's Catchr, but I don't know if he had much capital before then. |
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cwemory
Joined: 14 Jan 2006
Location: Gunpo, Korea
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:52 am Post subject: |
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| ChopChaeJoe wrote: |
Some pretty memorable quotes. I don't think they are oing for broke though.
That seems to imply some kind of cut-away fom the norm of what they did to get where they are. Using carefully collected capital for the chance to throw it all away in a gamble.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, Twain's Huck Finn, and Thomas Hardy's Tess do the trick on that account. Maybe Salinger's Catchr, but I don't know if he had much capital before then. |
Melville's Moby D!ck as well? He pretty much blew the capital he had earned as a travel writer on that one. |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:26 am Post subject: |
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Great Hunter S. Thompson quote. What book is it from? This I would like to read more of.
Ken:> |
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Have a look at Victor Hugo's 'Quatrevingt-treize', the "last stand of the Romantic movement against the rising tide of naturalism". |
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seoulsucker
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Location: The Land of the Hesitant Cutoff
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
Great Hunter S. Thompson quote. What book is it from? This I would like to read more of.
Ken:> |
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If you're interested in more stuff like that, try Generation of Swine.
Last edited by seoulsucker on Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Satori wrote: |
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I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
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Jack Kerouac, "On The Road" |
Special post to diagnose Satori a classless, juvenile twit for bring that wife-beating, alcoholic, talentless jackass into this thread. That is absolute shyte writing as well.
Absolute. Shyte.
Brrrrrrrrrr....shake it off. Shake it off. Blech.
Phew. OK now.
Now let me go look for some killer passages.
(You're normally OK Sat, but this Kerouac thing is beyond.) |
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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| flotsam wrote: |
| Satori wrote: |
| Quote: |
I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
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Jack Kerouac, "On The Road" |
Special post to diagnose Satori a classless, juvenile twit for bring that wife-beating, alcoholic, talentless jackass into this thread. That is absolute shyte writing as well.
Absolute. Shyte.
Brrrrrrrrrr....shake it off. Shake it off. Blech.
Phew. OK now.
Now let me go look for some killer passages.
(You're normally OK Sat, but this Kerouac thing is beyond.) |
You totally missed the point of that book, then. It is written following many common Romantic themes (compare it to Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and, especially, Eichendorff's 'Der frohe Wandersmann' ). Another aspect that you may have missed is that Kerouac made little effort to hide the fact that the protagonist (himself) is a francophone--and even more so in his original manuscript. The words are English, but the ways they flow together on paper have a certain quality that other francophones will recognize as theirs. That is the beauty of it, although so many people have not caught on, including many supposed Kerouac scholars.
Last edited by Hollywoodaction on Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters. |
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
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I stepped into a coffee shop and drew a diagram in my notebook of these personal relations of mine. It looked like a chart of the European powers before the start of World War I.
I pored over the diagram, half in admiration, half in despair. Three call girls, one too-charming-for-his-own-good actor, three artists, one budding teenage girl, and a very uptight hotel receptionist. If this was anything more than a network of casual relationships, I sure didn't see it. But it
might make a good Agatha Christie novel. By George, that's it! The Secretary did it! Only who was laughing?
And who was I kidding? I didn't have a clue. The ball of yarn tangled wherever you tried to unravel it. First there were the Kiki and Mei and Gotanda threads. Add Makimura and June. Then Kiki and June were somehow connected by the same phone number. And around and around you go.
�Hard nut to crack, eh, Watson?� I addressed the ashtray before me. The ashtray, of course, did not respond. Smart ashtray. Same went for the coffee cup and sugar bowl and the bill. They all pretended not to hear. Stupid me. I was the one running amok in these weird goings-on. I was the worn-out one. Such a wonderful spring night, and no prospect for a date.
I went home and tried calling Yumiyoshi. No luck. The early shift? Or her swim club night? I wanted to see her badly. I missed her nervous patter, her brisk movements. The way she pushed her glasses up on her nose, her serious expression when she stole into the room. I liked how she took off her blazer before sitting down beside me. I felt warm just thinking about her. I felt drawn to her. But would we ever get things straight between us?
Working behind the front desk of a hotel, going to her swim club�that gave her satisfaction. While I found plea�sure in my Subaru and my old records and eating well as I went on shoveling. That's the two of us. It might work and then again it might not. insufficient data, prognosis impos�sible. Or would I wind up hurting her too, as I did every woman I ever got involved with? Like my ex-wife said.
The more I thought about Yumiyoshi, the more I felt like flying up to Sapporo to fill in the missing data. At least I could tell her how I felt. But, no, first I had to untie some critical knots. Things were half-done. I didn't want to keep dragging them around with me. A half-gray shadow would cloud my path for the rest of my days. Not entirely ideal.
The problem was Kiki. I couldn't get over the feeling that she was at the heart of it. She was trying to reach me. In my dreams, in a movie in Sapporo, in downtown Honolulu. She kept crossing my path, trying to lead me somewhere, leave me a message. That much was clear. But nothing else. Kiki, what did you want from me?
What was I supposed to do?
I could only wait, until something showed. Same as ever. There was no point in rushing. Something was bound to happen. Something was bound to show. You had merely to wait for it to stir, up from the haze. Call it a lesson from experience.
Very well, then, I would wait. |
Murakami Haruki, Dance Dance Dance
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One of the snowflakes blew in and lodged itself on Kiyoaki's eyebrow. It made Satoko cry out, and without thinking, Kiyoaki turned toward her as he felt a cold trickle on his eyelid. She closed her eyes abruptly. Kiyoaki stared at the face with its closed lids; only the subdued crimson of her lips glowed in the shadows, and because of the swaying of the rickshaw, her feastures, like a flower held between trembling fingertips, were softly blurred.
Kiyoaki's heart thumped violently. He felt as if he were being choked by the high, tight collar of his uniform jacket. Never had he been confronted with anyhting as inscrutable as Satoko's white face, eyes closed, quietly waiting. Beneath the blanket, he felt her grip on his hand tighten slightly. He realized that she was telling him something, and so, despite his terrible sense of vulnerability, he felt that something gentle but irresistable was drawing him on. He pressed a kiss on her lips.
A moment later, the shaking of the rickshaw was about to force their lips apart, but Kiyoaki instinctively resisted the movement, until his whole body seemed to balance on that kiss, and he had the sensation that a huge, invisible, perfumed fan was slowly unfolding where their lips met.
At that instant, although totally engrossed, he was still keenly aware of his own good looks. Satoko's beauty and his: he saw that it was precisely this fine correspondence between the two that dissolved all constraint and allowed them to flow together, merging as easily as measures of quicksilver. All that was divisive and frustrating sprang from something alien to beauty. Kiyoaki now realized that a fanatical insistence on total independence was a disease, not of the flesh but of the mind. |
Mishima Yukio, Spring Snow
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Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses -- because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.
When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.
They had borrowed a melodeum -- a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body
ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait -- you couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, "Don't you worry -- just depend on me." Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "He had a rat!" Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. |
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn |
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flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Hollywoodaction wrote: |
| flotsam wrote: |
| Satori wrote: |
| Quote: |
I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
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Jack Kerouac, "On The Road" |
Special post to diagnose Satori a classless, juvenile twit for bring that wife-beating, alcoholic, talentless jackass into this thread. That is absolute shyte writing as well.
Absolute. Shyte.
Brrrrrrrrrr....shake it off. Shake it off. Blech.
Phew. OK now.
Now let me go look for some killer passages.
(You're normally OK Sat, but this Kerouac thing is beyond.) |
You totally missed the point of that book, then. It is written following many common Romantic themes (compare it to Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and, especially, Eichendorff's 'Der frohe Wandersmann' ). Another aspect that you may have missed is that Kerouac made little effort to hide the fact that the protagonist (himself) is a francophone--more so in his original manuscript. The words are English, but the ways they flow together on paper have a certain quality that other francophones will recognize as theirs. |
1. I said nothing about the point of the book. I said Kerouac was a jackass whose jackassness manifested in his writing.
2. Kerouac lacking ability in two languages doesn't make any of his writing good. His French was not perfect--he is what is known in the biz as a "lack-a-lingual".
3. I read French. Do you have a copy of a French transcript of the text? One he penned, naturally.
4. All of his other writing sucks. He was never more than Ginsberg and Snyder hanger-on.
5. Just because he was attempting to emulate some elements of Romanticism, doesn't mean you can compare him to real talents in the genre. Particularly Eichendorff, whose Mondnacht shows a level of richness and romance that Kerouac couldn't even understand, much less come close to. He was more trying to emulate Basho in both this and Dharma Bumps. Another piece of audacity that pisses me off to no end about him.
6. Sorry, mate, you sound like a freshman who just realized that there is more to poetry than pretty words that sound the same.
7. Kerouac sucks. That's pretty much the level of my argument, so I don't recommend trying to talk to me about it, because it is not a very complex discussion.
But I'm right. And I can prove it. |
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