F. Scott Fitzgerald, that's who.Gorgeous. Scarcely. Human. Orchid. Four words, so loaded with sensual freight that I had to pause there for a brief moment and unpack just the large, obvious portions of it."Perhaps you know that lady." Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.
"She's lovely," said Daisy.
"The man bending over her is her director."
The family Orchidaceae is the largest family of flowering plants, but you know immediately that she's not some perennial epiphyte clinging to a bush in a jungle somewhere. No, she's an exotic cultivar, hand-selected, so carefully tended that she couldn't exist outside of the humid, glass-walled enclosure of the studio. Her director-horticulturalist leans over her, reinforcing the image of care. For me, "scarcely human" and "ghostly" work together to conjure a willowy Jazz-age vision, wreathed with beads, a white face framed by a razor-black bob. One of the most exotic orchids, the birdlike kind with strange, luminescent tendrils that trail down across the pot's soil.
There's another one, later on:
"Hot!" said the conductor to familiar faces. "Some weather! hot! hot! hot! Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it . . . ?"
My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand. That any one should care in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed, whose head made damp the pajama pocket over his heart.
It's that last phrase that gets me. So much packed into that image, and it's just a throwaway portrait of a flitting character: off-duty, at night, asleep, perhaps snoring, with whomever he loves curled up against him...but who cares? It's hot.
I was discussing the recent realization of my profound literary ignorance, and my determination to remedy it, with a jazz writer friend of mine. She said something to the effect that I was seeking something "to model my writing on." There's nothing here to imitate--the attempt would be foolish. For me the lesson is about the density and rich possibilities of language, of what might be accomplished, if only I can pay enough attention and persevere.
That's not to say I think I can write as well as Fitzgerald. The idea is to absorb what he's done, to set a standard that improves my work more by the mere fact of its existence than the possibility of ever meeting it.
Onward, onward, onward.
All good writers learn by reading good books. It's not looking for something to mimic. It's just absorbing good nutrition for one's creative organs.
If you don't mind my saying, I think your friend is right. Without old friend Trust, Talent and Instinct are impotent. There's an elephant in this room. And he's written sentences that are as good or captivating as anything i've ever read.
Got a question for you, iWood. What do Atwood, Hemingway, King, Poe, Sinclair, Lawrence, Woolf, Stein, Dumas and Tolstoi have in common beyond the fact they are writers?
My jazz writer friend or Lizbon?
The inclusion of King and Atwood eliminated my first smart-ass answer, so now I don't have one...
Sorry, old dear, the few blogs i read, yours for instance, i do by "hand", so it takes me a while to realize i have missed something. But to answer your question, think Fosse.
Have i ever mentioned how much i enjoy the way your blog slash mind works? There then. Amends.
fossefossefosse madonna! madonna! madonna! and now there's robin williams everywhere
( ah good. appreciation. i shall bask now)
I feel this way when I read Poul Anderson. I have to stop and absorb his words. Taste them. Really roll them around in my head for a while. I come away thinking, "That man knows all the right words." I feel like I would never have chosen just those words, put them into those phrases.
Is it enough to know that it can be done? I do keep trying.
Mr. Wood, you are there. Sometimes you weave a phrase that catches me just so.
Pleased to catch you, especially just so...but according to my gas station map, THERE is perpetually several states away. There's also a Denny's coupon, which is nice.