Original expressions for ordinary expressions

One of the things I most like to observe in my favorite writers is how they come up with fresh, original ways to describe everyday facial expressions, etc. Although dialogue should be able to hold its own, it can be difficult to add life to an interaction between characters without some equally vivid sketches of their movements, gestures, and mannerisms as they speak. Sometimes these cues are just as essential to the subtext as the words spoken. Here is the first installment of a few good ones I've noticed here and there!

1. An unusual verb--most people would go for "drains" or "he went pale":

"Blood evacuates Lorca's ears and cheeks." 

--p 36, Marie-Helene Bertino. 2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas. New York, NY: Random House; 2014. 

2. A vivid simile:

"...Ruelle's face seals over like the visor of a knight clanging down." 

--p428 (Kindle edition), All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

3. A portrait of a grandfather morning his daughter: both an unusual gesture (biting a knuckle vs the overdone bitten lip) and an easily visualized simile:

"Grandpa looks at the pictures and blinks and puts a knuckle between his teeth. For maybe thirty seconds he doesn't answer. He looks like he's standing outside an elevator waiting for the doors to open."  

--p165, The River Nemunas. In: Anthony Doerr. Memory Wall. New York, NY: Scribner; 2010. 

On coming to the end of War and Peace

With the holidays over the last couple of weeks, I took an "accidental hiatus" from the blog--sorry about that. I was also working really hard on finishing the goal I set myself this January--to read War and Peace. And guys--I totally did it! Just landed on page 1215 this past Sunday, in fact.

Reading Tolstoy--and especially War and Peace--is mind-boggling, both for the sweeping, epic nature of the tale, as well as for how Tolstoy's omniscient (all-seeing) narration isn't afraid to zoom in and out of historical scenes at a head-spinning pace. According to the introduction of my edition (see source below), Tolstoy had a couple of big aims in this novel--one was to cross-examine conventional ideas about history and historical analysis, but the other was to tell the truth of history "to scale"--at the level of the average human being living it--so to speak. 

As a final tribute to the novel, I'm including one of my favorite parts of the book--where one of the main characters, Andrei Bolkonsky, a military adjutant, is in the middle of a losing battle, and despite this, bravely takes up the Russian standard and charges the enemy French. Within 4 paragraphs, Tolstoy brings Andrei from his role as a soldier in a batallion, moving through the "fog of war" in the blur of collective activity, to his role as an individual, a human, and finally, a moral being, who is forced to contemplate a larger reality beyond battle and beyond himself--God. It's quite beautiful and moving, and according the introduction of the edition I read (see the source below), part of Tolstoy's effort to capture the truth of the experience. Here you go--in pictures, because I wasn't up to typing the whole section up, sorry (you can blow it up and zoom in to read--the res should be high enough).

Pages from: War and Peace. eds. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, NY: Vintage Classics; 2008. Vol. 1, Part 2, VIII, pp180-181.

Life on the page

Right now, I'm reading War and Peace, as translated by the husband-and-wife team, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I don't know much about the two, except that I love their photo (left) and I want to adopt them.

I do know that the thing I like best about reading Tolstoy are those moments when his eye-of-God narration really gets "life on the page." Like this paragraph, where the opposing French and Russian armies are just yards apart, waiting for combat to start. Tolstoy dives into their collective thought bubble with:

"One step beyond that line, reminiscent of the line separating the living from the dead, and it's the unknown, suffering, and death. And what is there? who is there? there, beyond this field, and the tree, and the roof lit by the sun? No one knows, and you would like to know; and you're afraid to cross that line, and would like to cross it; and you know that sooner or later you will have to cross it and find out what is there on the other side of that line, as you will inevitably find out what is there on the other side of the death...."

To me, this is an earnest (and true) expression of what it's like to be on the brink of some major life event--that incredible torture of both wanting to know and not wanting to know, while also understanding that knowing won't make a difference: our futures are as inevitable as they are unimaginable. When I read this, I feel like I recognize my own experiences on the page, and that--to me--is one of the best gifts a writer can give.

Quote from: War and Peace. eds. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, NY: Vintage Classics; 2008. Vol. 1, Part 2, VIII, p141, para 2.