Restingmotion

There is nothing quite as enjoyable as good writing.  A good novel, beautifully written exists far beyond the level of just the plot and the story, although plot and story are also important.  Every bit is a treat to savor.

From Almayer’s Folly, probably the only Joseph Conrad novel I had not previously read:  These passages are from the ending, the tragedy of Almayer.

    He ceased, and they both sat silent side by side, not looking at each other, but gazing at the vast expanse of the sea.  Almayer’s words had dried Nina’s tears, and her look grew hard as she stared before her into the limitless sheet of blue that shone limpid, unwavering, and steady like heaven itself.  He looked at it also, but his features had lost all expression, and life in his eyes seemed to have gone out.  The face was a blank, without a sign of emotion, feeling, reason, or even knowledge of itself.  All passion, regret, grief, hope or anger — all were gone, erased by the hand of Fate, as if after this last stroke everything was over and there was no need for any record. 

and a little later on, how well Conrad captures the loss, the regret, the failure that shaped these lives and their expectations:

"I would have rather strangled you with my own hands," said Almayer, in an expressionless voice which was such a contrast to the desperate bitterness of his feelings that it surprised even himself.  He asked himself who spoke, and, after looking slowly round as if expecting to see somebody, turned again his eyes toward the sea.

‘You say that because you do not understand the meaning of my words," she said sadly.  "Between you and my mother there never was any love.  When  I returned to Sambir I found the place which I thought would be a peaceful refuge for my heart, filled with weariness and hatred — and mutual contempt.  I have listened to your voice and to her voice.  Then I saw that you could not understand me; for was I not part of that woman? Of her who was the regret and shame of your life" I had to choose–I hesitated.  Why were you so blind? Did you not see me struggling before your eyes?

Conrad is a master. And from The Return-

     He came to himself with a slight start, and became aware of an oppressive, crushing desolation.  It was only a feeling, it is true, but it produced on him a physical effect, as though his chest had been squeezed in a vice.  He perceived himself so extremely forlorn and lamentable, and was moved so deeply by the oppressive sorrow, that another turn of the screw, he felt, would bring tears out of his eyes.  He was deteriorating.  Five years of life in common had appeased his longing.  Yes, long-time ago.   The first five months did that — but . . . There as the habit — the habit of her person, of her smile, of her gestures, of her voice, of her silence.

These are not Conrad’s "Great works" the novels we have all heard of, but Conrad’s mastery of language and the human soul still comes out.

And from another great novelist, the opening of my new book All the Pretty Horses  by Cormack McCarthy.  A novelist I have only recently come to appreciate.

The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door.  He took off his hat and came slowly forward.  The floorboards creaked under his boots.  In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their wasted cutglass vase.  Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly know to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting.  He looked down at the  guttered candlestub.  He pressed his thumb print in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer.  Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin.  That was not sleeping.  That was not sleeping.

No thoughts, just reading.