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As a copywriter it’s perhaps not surprising that I love love
love reading. And having a Kindle has
opened up a world of great writers and great books to me.
I had previously read almost none of the following writers but I adore, admire (and envy) their ability to conjure up descriptions of people so well that you can actually see them leap off the page.
Fortunately the “My Clippings” function on the Kindle has allowed me to keep the words that most resonated with me so I can revisit them. I do hope you’ll enjoy visiting them too…
Edith Wharton: The
Age of Innocence
But none of these young men had much hope of really
advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire to do so; and over many of
them the green mould of the perfunctory was already perceptibly spreading.
G K Chesterton:
Father Brown Mystery Stories
Then came the Great Scandal, by which her friends and
enemies were horrified beyond their wildest hopes.
He had perhaps come to specialise too much in the spirit of
indignation.
No man knew better than Professor Openshaw the marks of
the letter of the crank; the crowded details, the spidery handwriting, the
unnecessary length and repetition.
Along a seaside parade on a sunny afternoon, a person with
the depressing name of Muggleton was moving with suitable gloom.
Wilkie Collins: Poor Miss
Finch
I made my best curtsey and found myself confronting a large,
light haired, languid, lymphatic lady.
Adam Hyland: Diamond
Dove
He’d pulled out a pipe, a beautiful briar, many times
repaired. He fired it up, his cheeks
full of wind and his eyes full of questions.
He had a receding hairline, a receding chin and by the look
of the creases in his jeans, a receding personality.
Adam Hyland: Gunshot
Road
Albie was an anomaly from go to whoa!
The cadaverous fellow standing alongside him had the rarefied
air of someone who’d consecrated his life to the absolute mastery of something
very, very small.
M.C. Beaton: Agatha
Raisin Omnibus
She often thought in capital letters.
Robert Goddard: Past
Caring
He didn’t so much enter a room as invade it. When it was his own, he didn’t inhabit it so
much as infest it.
Her voice and her lecturing style were like a chilled aperitif:
enticing you to the main course.
Charles Dickens: A
Tale of two Cities
And throwing off sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone
of his indignation, Mr Cruncher betook himself to his boot cleaning and his
general preparation for business.
O Henry: Heart of the
West
A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope
as excess baggage.
I‘ll give you a square deal. And that’s more than your
parents did when they turned you loose on the world with the sociability of a
rattle-snake and the bedside manner of a frozen turnip.
Fay Weldon: Kehua!
And blowsy middle-aged women whose heads leaned forward with
the weight of their mascara.
Jerome K Jerome: Three
men in a Boat
That’s Harris all over – so ready to take the burden of
everything himself, and then put it on the backs of other people.
No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than
I do.
Oh dear, that last quote definitely applies to me
today. My work has been safely preserved
whilst I indulged myself if re-visiting these fabulous wordsmiths. I do hope you enjoyed reading this blog post as much
as I enjoyed writing it! If you did, follow my blog so
you can catch my next post on author's wonderful descriptions of places.
And please, do share any similar quotes by commenting - I would love to hear them
PS: This got such a good reaction that I went on to share great descriptions of people and a lovely quintessentially English poem
PS: This got such a good reaction that I went on to share great descriptions of people and a lovely quintessentially English poem
I love this description of the wonderful Al, from Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black.
ReplyDeleteAlison was a woman who seemed to fill a room, even when she wasn't in it. She was of an unfeasible size, with plump creamy shoulders, rounded calves, thighs and hips that overflowed her chair; she was soft as an Edwardian, opulent as a showgirl, and when she moved you could hear (though she did not wear them) the rustle of plumes and silks. In a small space, she seemed to use up more than her share of the oxygen; in return her skin breathed out moist perfumes, like a giant tropical flower. When you came into a room she'd left - her bedroom, her hotel room, her dressing room backstage - you felt her as a presence, a trail. Alison had gone, but you would see a chemical mist of hairspray falling through the bright air. On the floor would be a line of talcum powder, and her scent - Je Reviens - would linger in curtain fabric, in cushions and in the weave of towels.
I love Hilary Mantel's description of the wonderful Al in "Beyond Black".
ReplyDeleteAlison was a woman who seemed to fill a room, even when she wasn't in it. She was of an unfeasible size, with plump creamy shoulders, rounded calves, thighs and hips that overflowed her chair; she was soft as an Edwardian, opulent as a showgirl, and when she moved you could hear (though she did not wear them) the rustle of plumes and silks. In a small space, she seemed to use up more than her share of the oxygen; in return her skin breathed out moist perfumes, like a giant tropical flower. When you came into a room she'd left - her bedroom, her hotel room, her dressing room backstage - you felt her as a presence, a trail. Alison had gone, but you would see a chemical mist of hairspray falling through the bright air. On the floor would be a line of talcum powder, and her scent - Je Reviens - would linger in curtain fabric, in cushions and in the weave of towels.
Wow, that is really excellent. My daughter introduced me to Hilary Mantel but as I did not read her on kindle I have been unable to retain her stuff so far. Thank you for sharing this, I found myself scenting the room as if she were in the office - powerful stuff!!
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