supplementary reading
a mermaid from the net, or did a prince from another story tauten the tails of her hair and bend her shoulder-bone into a harp and pluck the dead, black tunes for ever in the courts of the royal country? The boy sent a stone skidding over the green water. He saw a rabbit scuttle, and threw a stone at its tail. A fish leaped at the gnats, and a lark darted out of the green earth. This was the best summer since the first seasons of the world. He did not believe in God, but God had made this summer full of blue winds and heat and pigeons in the house wood. There were no chim- neys on the hills with no name in the distance, only the trees which stood like women and men enjoying the sun; there were no cranes or coal-tips, only the nameless distance and the hill with seven trees. He could think of no words to say how wonderful the summer was, or the noise of the wood-pigeons, or the lazy corn blowing in the half wind from the sea at the river's end. There were no words for the sky and the sun and the summer country: the birds were nice, and the corn was nice.
posted by hallamorgan at
6:29 PM
3 Comments:
one thing that thomas is pro at is the original use of adjectives. I think this talent is really an ability to find words that are rarely used to describe the noun in question, even if the word itself isn't necessarily original (or even an adjective, which is really cool: 'the summer country'). For example: 'dead' and 'black' are not rare words, but to use them to describe tunes is rare, mainly because sound isn't often thought to have life, death, or color. Another original use of a common adjective is 'blue winds.' It is apt, but normally when thinking of winds we only consider a short list of adjectives. I'm gonna call these close adjectives, as in not far, easily prompted, effective but not creative (creative is what i'm really trying to define). Thomas uses far adjectives, as in long-distance associations between two disparate 'things.' Think of any given noun as a person and all that person's friends, acquaintances, relatives are adjectives. If person A knows x amount of people, some really well and some only slightly, then the average writer normally only relies on close friends and relatives to describe person A. Good writers contact the acquaintances. But writers like Thomas don't even bother with anyone that knows the noun, he steals adjectives from other nouns. funeral: dead, black tunes. sky: blue winds. Then he does other things like 'half wind.' Welch stops with 'hot wind.' It's not difficult to say 'the wind is only half as strong as it usually is,' but it takes a creative leap to condense that sentence into one short adjective noun combo. Welch said 'hot wind' but using the borrowed friend formula, Thomas might have considered other things that are characteristically hot and taken one of the adjectives, however common it may be to that noun, and used it to describe the wind. Or if he were to use the condensing formula like he did with half wind, he might have written out a long list of sentences describing how hot the wind is and then condensed one of them, something like 'it's only this hot every hundred years,' or 'this heat is making me sweat,' etc. another cool adjective noun combo is 'nameless distance.' Welch says 'two miles' while thomas says 'nameless distance.' He could have said 'unknown distance' or something similar, but he didn't. Another cool thing is when Thomas takes nouns and uses them as adjectives, this is another one of his go-to techniques. ok i'm tired of this.
one more thing is that Thomas takes how a thing makes you, the subject, feel and applies it to the object. For example, 'I'm laying in the corn and i'm feeling lazy' turns into 'the lazy corn.' If the hills make you melancholy, they would become 'these melancholy hills' like nick cave does in the proposition. Another analogy of the borrowing friends adjective formula might be borrowing ingredients from foreign cuisines and using it in a domestic receipe.
There is an exercise called "Like Water for Words: A Simile Exercise." You're supposed to resist comparing a sound with a sound, a taste with a taste, a scent with a scent, etc. The morning sun tastes like... The music sounded heavy as... Midnight rain is bitter as... You get it. This reminds me of Thomas' far adjectives.
A similarity between Thomas and Welch is their focus on nature. In Thomas' writing the character of the boy is burried beneath nature's hills. (<See what I did there?) The boy pops up every once in awhile, and that seems to make his presence stand out. Nature encompases, and becomes the natural. The character--although main--is, not really pushed aside, but is not really main. Yet, in this covering of the boy, his mention stands out far greater.
I'm picturing a painting that's kind of like a jungle scene, or just any scene from nature really, but it's really detailed and complex--tons of layering and tons of everything. So you have this supremely detailed, complex, super artistic/gorgeous painting of nature and you're really pulled in. Then, after hours of examination, you find a little boy mixed with all the greens and browns and blues. Whereas before you were focused on all of the naturalistic and gorgeous aspects of the painting, now you can't take your eyes off that boy. Kind of like that.
Oh yeah, and in Winter in the Blood nature is also huge... but the main character is huger.
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