I see a distinction between pedestrian prose and effective prose when reading, but your descriptions don't work for me at all. (Not that I can do better!) To me, it's not the prose that brings me to re-read something, but the story. Merely pedestrian prose might keep me from sinking into the story as well as more effective prose, but not enough for me to put the distinction there.
"Lapidary" prose, on the other hand, usually makes me run very, very far in the other direction. I don't *want* to slow down to parse the sentences. I don't want to be aware of the words, as such, when I read; I want to fall through the words into the story.
This is not to say that anyone with other preferences is in any sense wrong.
This is an excellent point. I guess I'd have to qualify by saying, for purposes of comparison, the same type of story. For example, take romance. For me Jennifer Crusie writes in effective prose--evocative, vivid, funny. There are others whose prose gets the job done, but ten seconds after I close the book, I've forgotten the entire thing, and if I sort my books a few months later, I can't remember if I read it or not, but I can tell you a lot about the Crusies.
Then there is another popular romance writer. I can't remember her name right now, but a lot of people love her historical romances, wax rhapsodic about their lyricism. I tried three of them, and bogged about forty pages in on all three--what they found lyrical, I found positively sodden, like I was drowning in a bath of syrup and tears.
It's true--we can have highly individual reactions to all these works. But it's interesting to try to perceive patterns. (At least I find it interesting!)
If I've learned nothing else from the children's literature course I'm doing, I've learned that a story that one person loves can be, to someone else, tedious and yawn inducing or even too awful to read.
I don't think there's been a single story on the list that has generated universal love, nor one that everyone hates. The love/hate factor can be character, setting, plot or prose style, so when it comes to reading for enjoyment, it always seems to boil down to personal taste and just as some people will happily eat a wide range of foods from the bland to the subtle and exotic, others just stick to one type or the other. But I think it's important to respect other people's choices, even if we, personally, don't see what they see in a story.
Absolutely. There is no utility in telling someone else their choice is bad. However, I think there is great utility in discovering what worked for people and why.
Yes, the famous "your mileage may vary" has to apply in these discussions.
I do feel moved to point out, however, that "lapidary" prose is often very simple, not overwrought at all. Some readers seem to think that "literary" means long sentences, probably because they were given 19th century fiction in school. But the opposite can be true. Virginia Woolf of the MRS. DALLOWAY period would be a good example.
I think we also have to realize that some readers are just plain lazy. It comes from watching a lot of TV. :-)
If it is - it shouldn't be. Not only has TV made people into lazy readers, it has made (some of) them into lazier talkers. I once listened to a man visiting his mother in the hospital who didn't speak a single sentence the entire half hour he was there that wasn't a line from a sit-com or TV-drama
This is quite true.I think when one is used to a cultural style of prose, say, (early or late nineteenth century) can affect one's view of same. I find Austen transparent and effective at the genius level, but I've been reading that period so long that it has joined my inner category as subheading on everyday. I'm surprised when people call Austen's prose lapidary when the evidence is there that she worked very, very hard to control figurative language in favor of tiny but realistic detail.
I suspect that that is the goal for a great many writers. (Others find joy in prosodic complexity.)
I was just talking about this on the phone with a writer friend, who pointed out that prose is seldom going to slot into one category over a lifetime. While most seem to agree that Tom Clancy, for example, wrote pedestrian prose and ditto Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling has divided sharply for many readers: some found her pedestrian to the point of unreadable, but others found her prose highly effective, especially the young people whom she wrote for.
My friend said that writers we found effective or even lapidary as young readers can shift categories as we read more. So it's interesting to discover who sticks over a lifetime.
That's a really important point. Tastes change as we grow and change, and to some extent, as you pointed out in your essay, we're talking about "taste", not Immortal Law.
Great discussion thread! I'm sure everyone's noticed that whenever we speak of prose (or poetic) style, we can only speak in metaphor. Heck, whenever we speak of "voice" it's metaphoric as well. Some of the metaphors have to do with "making" other forms of art: "craftsmanlike" or "lapidary". Others come from musical performance "singing" or "bell-like" etc. But when it comes to pinning down what it is that makes prose readable or unreadable to the individual reader, we might as well stay with Tolkien's *from "On Fairy-Stories"* "a kind of Elvish craft."
That's right. I think these words are guidelines only, and the discussion useful for trying to determine how these patterns of words affect people and why.
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"Lapidary" prose, on the other hand, usually makes me run very, very far in the other direction. I don't *want* to slow down to parse the sentences. I don't want to be aware of the words, as such, when I read; I want to fall through the words into the story.
This is not to say that anyone with other preferences is in any sense wrong.
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Then there is another popular romance writer. I can't remember her name right now, but a lot of people love her historical romances, wax rhapsodic about their lyricism. I tried three of them, and bogged about forty pages in on all three--what they found lyrical, I found positively sodden, like I was drowning in a bath of syrup and tears.
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I don't think there's been a single story on the list that has generated universal love, nor one that everyone hates. The love/hate factor can be character, setting, plot or prose style, so when it comes to reading for enjoyment, it always seems to boil down to personal taste and just as some people will happily eat a wide range of foods from the bland to the subtle and exotic, others just stick to one type or the other. But I think it's important to respect other people's choices, even if we, personally, don't see what they see in a story.
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I do feel moved to point out, however, that "lapidary" prose is often very simple, not overwrought at all. Some readers seem to think that "literary" means long sentences, probably because they were given 19th century fiction in school. But the opposite can be true. Virginia Woolf of the MRS. DALLOWAY period would be a good example.
I think we also have to realize that some readers are just plain lazy. It comes from watching a lot of TV. :-)
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I was just talking about this on the phone with a writer friend, who pointed out that prose is seldom going to slot into one category over a lifetime. While most seem to agree that Tom Clancy, for example, wrote pedestrian prose and ditto Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling has divided sharply for many readers: some found her pedestrian to the point of unreadable, but others found her prose highly effective, especially the young people whom she wrote for.
My friend said that writers we found effective or even lapidary as young readers can shift categories as we read more. So it's interesting to discover who sticks over a lifetime.
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But when it comes to pinning down what it is that makes prose readable or unreadable to the individual reader, we might as well stay with Tolkien's *from "On Fairy-Stories"* "a kind of Elvish craft."
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