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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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June 04, 2008

THE GOD OF WAR REVIEW

25913779My review of Marisa Silver's excellent new novel The God of War can now be found at the Barnes & Noble Review.  It begins thus:

California's largest lake, the Salton Sea, sits at 227 feet below sea level and was created by accident. A 1905 project to divert water from the Colorado River to irrigate the Imperial Valley went awry, and for two years, water flooded the Salton Sink, resulting in (depending upon whom you ask) a desert wasteland or a miraculous ecosystem that continues to draw eccentrics to its shores. In a February 2002 essay for Outside Magazine, William T. Vollmann memorably depicted the North Shore:

... the beach comprising not sand but barnacle shells, fish bones, fish scales, fish corpses, and bird corpses, its accompaniment an almost unbearable ammoniac stench like rancid urine magnified. Fish carcasses in rows and rows, more sickening stenches, the underfoot crunch of white cheek-plates like seashells -- oh, rows and banks of whiteness, banks of vertebrae; feathers and vertebrae twitching in the water almost within reach of the occasional half-mummified bird.

But amid the putrescence and decay, a family caught his eye, "the children running happily, sinking ankle-deep in scales and barnacles, nobody expressing any botheration about the stench or the relics underfoot." It's not stretching the conceit too terribly far to imagine Vollmann's watchful eye falling on the shades of Ares Ramirez and his brother Malcolm, the two young boys at the heart of Marisa Silver's engrossing new novel, The God of War. But, as we're told within the first pages, happiness will not be the lot of these boys. Violence and tragedy are gathering and, as one of Silver's characters avers, the desert "will kill everything valuable."

You can read the entire review here.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times travels out to the Salton Sea with Silver.  (Say that fast five times ... )

Posted by TEV at 10:34 AM in Worthy Titles |

Comments

Yup, I agree, this book was mesmerizing, and pitch perfect. Really moving and powerful and didn't take the easy way out with any of the characters but especially the mom, Silver made her very 3-D and sympathetic despite her failings. Perfect example of show don't tell. Also incredible descriptions of the desert. Just a pleasure all around!

Posted by: denise | June 04, 2008 at 05:56 PM

I'm shocked SHOCKED I SAY to see that you would quote from Vollmann!

Posted by: ed | June 09, 2008 at 06:12 AM

Yeah, I think I did that mostly to see if you would notice ...

Posted by: TEV | June 09, 2008 at 09:43 AM

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