I'm removing as many softening words or tentative conjugations as I can. Less of the it seemed kind of writing and more of the it was. Also turning I was running into I ran. Make everything more immediate for Brendan's telling. Tighter. Cleaner.
I'm currently reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winner...a chapter at a time as I do my business on the toilet. It's taken me some time to get into the book, and I like Joe Kavalier more than Sammy Clay, so far, but it's started me thinking about something.
The writing style does not seem to fit the story, to me. Chabon's prose is very busy and rich and erudite, with a couple words I had to look up. Which surprised me, because I like to think of myself as somewhat educated with a good vocabulary. But that's what clued me in.
Joe is a Jewish boy who's escaped from Prague after the Anschluss. Sammy is his cousin, in Brooklyn, who's always trying to find an angle. It's weird, but the writing of their stories is...I dunno how to put it...too rich for their backgrounds, so far. It's told in 3rd person omniscient, so it's not like the boys are using words and phrases they wouldn't yet know, but it doesn't match them.
I'm thinking of another Pulitzer Prize winner -- Lonesome Dove -- in comparison. Larry McMurtry's style is simple and direct, like his characters, Gus and Call. And Alice Walker's style in The Color Purple fits Celie perfectly. But that of another Pulitzer winner -- Trust -- was so dry and removed from the characters I could not connect with them; it was like I was reading an outline for the book and characters instead of following their stories. And A Confederacy of Dunces was working so hard at being unusual it became impossible.
I like to think the style I have in APoS-Derry and NWFO reflects well on Brendan, which is probably easier to get away with because it's being told in 1st person. Won't know till I'm done.
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