Word: prose
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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William Makepeace Thackeray was the greatest prose stylist of his day, and the tallest (6 ft. 3 in.). Once, staring over the heads of a crowd, he saw himself being watched at a distance by "a strange visage" that studied him "with an expression of comical woebegoneness." Just as he was getting interested in the "rueful being," he discovered that it was himself, reflected in a mirror...
...Dumb Oxen. As for the plot, it is about a fighter called Eddie and his manager, Doc, and about how Eddie may or may not have made the middleweight crown. But another thing this book offers, apart from a reasonably, effective story, is wonderful examples of tough prose. One minor character is wondering about what happened to another character named Angelo. "Twenty to life," replies another character named Frankie. "He killed some poor slob run a candy store. They shoulda juiced him, but they give him twenty to life. Just a hood." The Professional, in short, is a classic example...
...four hours the debate droned on. One by one, Teamster partisans pleaded for charity, invoked in lofty prose the memory of bleeding feet at Valley Forge and treachery among the Twelve Apostles. It was all useless. Word came, too, that even cocky Jimmy Hoffa had tried surreptitiously to work out a last-minute deal with George Meany, but Jimmy had been too busy to settle on a date. He was busy, in fact, in Manhattan federal court, where he was standing trial on wiretapping charges. (Teamster ex-President Dave Beck was tied up in Seattle, where he was on trial...
PLATERO AND I, by Juan Ramón Jiménez. One of the best-loved books of the Spanish-speaking world, by the 1956 Nobel Prizewinner-138 prose poems about life and death in the author's home town in Spain. The poems are addressed to the narrator's companion, a donkey, with bittersweet and sensuous grace and delicacy...
There are two possible explanations for the unbelievably vapid prose. Either Dr. Farnsworth is incapable of rendering his experience into prose, in which case he should not have tried, or else he has substituted words for experience, in which case he should reexamine his words...