I am currently reading “Panther Soup – a European journey in war and peace” (which, unfortunately, I can’t download) by John Gimlette and am deeply impressed with its style. Section 32 is a good example -
Provence is dangerously magnificent. The mountains are as keen as knives and thesoil’s the colour of blood. Rivers never seem to meander here but boil through thestones, and the trees are as hard as iron and knotted by the wind...St Victoire – a crag so brutally alluring that Cezanne couldn’t stop painting it andgave us more than sixty different versions. He even visited it on the day he caughta chill in 1906, and died on the way back home. Poor Cezanne, he wasn’t the firstto bring us news of Provence but was the first to die of its beauty.
The writing style of other writers has impressed me – particularly Yanis Varoufakis
What makes Varoufakis' various books such excellent reading is the sheer originality of his prose – showing a mind at work which is constantly active…...rejecting dead phrases, clichés and jargon… helping us see thlngs in a different light..... using narrative and stories to keep the readers’ interest alive…He's in total command of the english language - rather than, as so usual, it in control of him.....
You don’t expect to find good prose in the “Further Reading” section of an economics textbook, but just see what Varoufakis does with the task……
Lawrence Durrell is a novellist – a younger version of whom is rather unfairly portrayed in the TV series The Durrell family - whose style very much appeals to me. Indeed I’ve developed a theory about “outsiders” to try to explain how moving to a new world changes ones perceptions.Recommendations on Style The Sense of Style Stephen Pinker (2014)
Many eminent stylists have applied their gifts to explaining the art, including Kingsley Amis, Jacques Barzun, Ambrose Bierce, Bill Bryson, Robert Graves, Tracy Kidder, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, F. L. Lucas, George Orwell, William Safire, and of course EB White, the beloved author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.
The Economist Style Guide Greene (2018) Posts about Style https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-craft-of-writing-and-thinking.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-magnum-opus.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-importance-of-critical-reading.html https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2021/11/words.html style https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/05/martin-amis-unexpected-death-has.html
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