>carrie is mean to james lee burke:
>
>I'm not a big fan of the overdescription thing,
especially when
>it's of nature and not, say, a neighborhood in a city
where the
>landscape says something important about the
inhabitants.
>A poet friend of mine calls this kind of stuff
"gratuitous
>scenery" and tends to make big X's through it in her
paperbacks.
****************
hmm... well, in a way i can see your point. the novel could
have proceeded without all that. but i have just a couple
comments.
ONE, i think one of the points that burke was making was that
nature says as much about the people who live in it as the
city neighborhood says about the city folk.
TWO, these descriptive passages we're talking about were
often two or three short sentences, and never more than a
modest paragraph. this is not even close to the full page and
beyond sorta stuff you would get from some of the oldies like
tolstoy, karamazov, stendhal, dickens, etc. i find that sorta
writing tedious and difficult, although i don't deny its
value. hey, they didn't have tv back then, so the author was
substituting words for the 42-inch big screen in your living
room.
and THREE (snuck another one in on you, didn't i? haha.),
there is no way that i would ever describe those passages as
"gratuitous scenery". they established a mood. thru metaphor
they foreshadowed. they added depth and color; they were
atlanta burning in the background while rhett steals a kiss
from scarlett.
so there! ;-)
miker
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