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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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« L.A. EVENT/GUEST COLUMN: SETH GREENLAND | Main | FATELESS CONTROVERSY »

March 15, 2005

STOP THE PRESSES

It's here.

Bsea

Phone is unplugged.  Computer is offline.  Don't expect anything remotely useful from us any time soon.

Here's the first paragraph:

They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide.  All morning under a milky sky the waters in the bay had swelled and swelled, rising to unheard-of heights, the small waves creeping over parched sand that for years had known no wetting save for rain and lapping the very bases of the dunes.  The rusted hulk of the freighter that had run aground at the far end of the bay longer ago than any of us could remember must have thought it was being granted a relaunch.  I would not swim again, after that day.  The seabirds mewled and swooped, unnerved, it seemed, by the spectacle of that vast bowl of water bulging like a blister, lead-blue and malignantly agleam.  They looked unnaturally white, that day, those birds.  The waves were depositing a fringe of soiled yellow foam along the waterline.  No sail marred the high horizon.  I would not swim, no, not ever again.

We're in bliss.  Don't call.  Don't write.  (UK Release, June 2005.  US Release, 2006)

Posted by TEV at 12:30 AM |

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Comments

Ooh this is a wonderful beginning. how come you have it already?

Posted by:jai | March 15, 2005 at 06:10 AM

If you need extra toilet paper, let me know. :)

Posted by:Ed | March 15, 2005 at 07:32 AM

Lead blue + soiled yellow = snotgreen.

Posted by:Jim Ruland | March 15, 2005 at 08:56 AM

Jealous. Go write your two pages. Before reading blogs.

Posted by:TEV | March 15, 2005 at 09:54 AM

Let's see: It's now 2:20 (did my 2 pages, only took 6 hours). You done reading yet?

Posted by:Karen | March 15, 2005 at 02:23 PM

There had better be an interview with this author soon!

Enjoy,

Posted by:Dan Wickett | March 15, 2005 at 02:33 PM

Good on you for getting your fave authors new book this early. Good karma for posting those cool pics of your bookshelves a few weeks back, no? Enjoy

Posted by:D Worsley | March 15, 2005 at 04:47 PM

I miss my morning hit of TEV!

Damn you, Banville!

Posted by:Justine | March 16, 2005 at 11:38 AM

Snotgreen has been used before by some pretty illustrious people. FYI James :)

Posted by:genevieve | March 16, 2005 at 09:53 PM

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