Yesterday I posted some of my "experts" the writers who help me get into the flow of the different kind of writing I do for my clients. Here are some of my favourite I-W experts:
Adapted from About.com
- Bernard Malamud - Rich Anecdote Through Subordination
- Joseph Mitchell - Visual Description
- George Orwell - Shifting Point of View
- Wallace Stegner - Description and Sentence Fragments
- James Thurber - Interest Through Varied Sentence Length
- Frank Trippett - Examples Without Using "Examples"
- Eudora Welty - Character Through Description
- E.B. White - Friendly Voice and Metaphor
- Tom Wolfe - Status Through Description
Bernard Malamud - Subordination from A New Life (1961)
The narrator of Bernard Malamud's third novel, A New Life (1961), is Sy Levin, a troubled English teacher who abandons New York City in search of renewal at a mythical college in the Pacific Northwest. In this paragraph from early in the novel, Levin relates his encounter with his first class on the opening day of the fall term. Notice how he makes some clauses and phrases subordinate to others.
Silence thickened as he talked, the attentiveness of the class surprising him, although it was a college class--that made the difference. He had expected, to tell the truth, some boredom--the teacher pushing the tide; but everyone's eyes were fastened on him. Heartened by this, his shame at having been late all but evaporated, Levin, with a dozen minutes left to the hour, finally dropped grammar to say what was still on his mind: namely, welcome to Cascadia College. He was himself a stranger in the West but that didn't matter. By some miracle of movement and change, standing before them as their English instructor by virtue of his appointment, Levin welcomed them from wherever they came: the Northwest states, California, and a few from beyond the Rockies, a thrilling representation to a man who had in all his life never been west of Jersey City.
If they worked conscientiously in college, he said, they would come in time to a better understanding of who they were and what their lives might yield, education being revelation. At this they laughed, though he wasn't sure why. Still, if they could be so good-humored early in the morning it was all right with him. He noticed now that some of them turned in their seats to greet old friends; two shook hands as if to say this was the place to be. Levin grew eloquent. The men in the class--there were a few older students, veterans--listened with good-natured interest, and the girls gazed at the instructor with rosy-faced, shy affection. In his heart he thanked him, sensing he had created their welcome of him. They represented the America he had so often heard of, the fabulous friendly West. So what if he spoke with flat a's and they with rocky r's? Or he was dark and nervously animated, they blond, tending to impassive? Or if he had come from a vast metropolis of many-countried immigrants, they from towns and small cities where anyone was much like everyone? In Levin's classroom they shared ideals of seeking knowledge, one and indivisible. "This is the life for me," he admitted, and they broke into cheers, whistles, loud laughter. The bell rang and the class moved noisily into the hall, some nearly convulsed. As if inspired, Levin glanced down at his fly, and it was, as it must be, all the way open.
Bernard Malamud's A New Life was first published in 1961 by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy. A new edition, with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2004.
For more, go to Compendium of Styles I-W on the Writing Tips Page of MoorePartners.ca
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