joy of language

Litlove created a meme a few weeks ago that speaks to my own language-loving heart and so I am happy to join in the fun -  

List some of your favourite words: 

Some words I love purely for their sound, their melody or their humor. Words like mellifluous, Humperdinck, ravioli, august, palaver… 

Some words I love for their ambiguity – their ability to serve both positive and negative punches. Words like liberty, bewitch, pious, audacious… 

And I love other words for what their parts tells us about the whole: aquifer (bearing water), encomium (in revelry), zeitgeist (spirit of the times) 

What’s your favourite maxim or proverb? 

This one is tough – I don’t keep a lot of maxims or proverbs in day-to-day memory. I do have a Japanese wall hanging in my living room that my tea ceremony sensei gave me when I left Japan the last time. It says ichi go ichi e, which means something like Carpe Diem with a slight twist. The idea is to experience whatever moment you happen to be in to the fullest and in extension to experience life to the fullest. It’s meant for the actual tea ceremony when your entire mind should be concentrated on the beauty and uniqueness of that moment.  

What’s your favourite quotation? 

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

George Eliot, Middlemarch 

What’s your favourite first line of a novel? 

This one is also hard so I’ll pick the best from the list of books I’ve read so far this year. I’m torn between two and so will give them both. 

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea 

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead 

Give an example of a piece of description that’s really pleased you in your reading lately: 

There was a cold moon at the window, pouring light into the dorm like skim milk. I sat up in bed, and my shadow fell across the body, seeming to cleave it in half between the hips and the shoulders, leaving only a black space. The swelling had gone down enough in the eyes that they were open; they stared into the full light of hte moon, open and undreaming, glazed from being open so long without blinking until they were like smudged fuses in a fuse box. I moved to pick up the pillow, and the eyes fastened on the movement and followed me as I stood up and crossed the few feet between the beds. 

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Which five writers do you particularly admire for their use of language? 

Virginia Woolf, Louise Erdrich, Martin Amis, Nadime Gordimer, Alice McDermott 

And are there writers whose style you really dislike? 

I think I am very forgiving when it comes to style – I can’t think of anyone who I absolutely dislike. Having said that, I’m very picky about what type of book I read. I only very rarely read YA, mystery, chick-lit, romance, or sci-fi/fantasy specifically because style doesn’t seem to be as important in those genres as it is in more classical-type fiction.  

What’s the key to really fine writing, in your opinion? 

Using words to create something extraordinary and unique out of an ordinary, universal feeling. Allowing a character to discover something distinctive or intuitive about the human experience and then finding a way to implicate the reader, any reader, in that new understanding or question.