# What is This I Don't Even



## Mindfire (Dec 4, 2012)

> "For gray-eyed Destiny now weaves apace, the first resounding note of war echoes across the land."



Um, what?




> "Movement flickered through it, like the swish of a bird across a clouded moon."



Huh?




> "The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."



Okay... *But what does this MEAN?*

(Rep points for whoever can guess the writer and/or book these are from.)


Perhaps one of the most spectacular abuses of this trope in existence.


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## MadMadys (Dec 4, 2012)

Eldest - Christopher Paolini

Also, thank you google.


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## Ireth (Dec 4, 2012)

Argh, I recognize those quotes, especially the last one... can't remember the author's naaame. Grawr.


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## tlbodine (Dec 4, 2012)

This put a smile on my face.  Once upon a time, I used to roleplay online (ok, I still do that part) on Neopets.  From the age of, oh, 12 to 16, I would spend all of my free time RPing with other kids.  And one of the unspoken "rules" of RPing was that you had to use the most bombastic, overwrought language possible in order to show how "literate" you were.  So you'd end up writing stupid drivel like "Cerulean optics swiveled forward as a smile twitched up the lupine's maw, auds folding back toward its cranial lobe" and everyone would ooh and aah over how clever you were.  

Fortunately, I grew out of that habit, but seeing people talk in that sort of "wolfspeak" still cracks me up.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Dec 4, 2012)

> "For gray-eyed Destiny now weaves apace, the first resounding note of war echoes across the land."





Mindfire said:


> Um, what?



It means that circumstances that will eventually lead to war have been swiftly set in motion.



> "Movement flickered through it, like the swish of a bird across a clouded moon."





> Huh?



Something moved in a flickering way.



> "The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."





> Okay... *But what does this MEAN?*



Depends on the context, I guess. 

Also, this reminds of reading Patricia A. McKillip. I don't know if it was our translation or something, but her Cygnet books were so insanely poetic that half the time I had no idea what was going on. (But they were still awesome.)




> Perhaps one of the most spectacular abuses of this trope in existence.





tlbodine said:


> This put a smile on my face.  Once upon a time, I used to roleplay online (ok, I still do that part) on Neopets.  From the age of, oh, 12 to 16, I would spend all of my free time RPing with other kids.  And one of the unspoken "rules" of RPing was that you had to use the most bombastic, overwrought language possible in order to show how "literate" you were.  So you'd end up writing stupid drivel like "Cerulean optics swiveled forward as a smile twitched up the lupine's maw, auds folding back toward its cranial lobe" and everyone would ooh and aah over how clever you were.



See also: Purple Prose.


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## Mindfire (Dec 4, 2012)

My point is that the writing is extremely overwrought and that no one should write like this unless they're intentionally trying to outdo the best of the worst of the worst of fantasy writing, like Eye of Argon or R_b_rt St_n_k.


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## Devor (Dec 5, 2012)

The middle one wasn't too bad.  It created an image, a bird flying with the moon behind it.  I assume he's describing the "orb" and that imagery kind of sounds appropriate.

That said, the other two you've posted are horrible, like somebody trying and failing to remember the wording of a bad cliche, and I couldn't get past the first chapter of that book.


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## CupofJoe (Dec 5, 2012)

They sound almost Aural - as if someone was writing down a story they heard around a fire late at night.
It might be difficult/intense to read but I think it would sound great spoken by a good story-teller.


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## Rullenzar (Dec 5, 2012)

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with these. It's nice to switch it up from time to time so your not reading the same crap all the time. It isn't very hard to understand either if your into that sort of thing.

Mind you this is coming from someone who had to study Shakespeare in school so....


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## saellys (Dec 5, 2012)

The "gray-eyed Destiny" line has a certain Homeric poetry to it, and the other two are understandable with a little intellectual effort. Altogether these really don't bother me and they're not half as elaborate as some things I've read. If I hadn't seen the author name earlier in the thread, I probably would have guessed it to be Kay. It may not be the voice you want for your work, but I don't see the point of knocking it.


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## Chilari (Dec 5, 2012)

saellys said:


> The "gray-eyed Destiny" line has a certain Homeric poetry to it, and the other two are understandable with a little intellectual effort. Altogether these really don't bother me and they're not half as elaborate as some things I've read. If I hadn't seen the author name earlier in the thread, I probably would have guessed it to be Kay. It may not be the voice you want for your work, but I don't see the point of knocking it.



Don't you think it sounds incredibly pretentious, though? As if the author is trying too hard to sound smart and sophisticated? As if trying to say, "look, I deserve to be recognised as a writer of classical literature, give me a Nobel prize." I can see things like "grey-eyed Destiny" working in a novel set in the Trojan War, or the flitting moon thing working in a Mills & Boon romance, where pretentious language isn't so out of place, but in fantasy it doesn't feel right. All it is is showing off what an impressive vocabulary the author has.


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## Rullenzar (Dec 5, 2012)

I think your just looking too far into this. As long as it's readable and helps us to paint a picture then I don't see a problem with it. The way you make it sound is that you have more of a problem with the author then the actual text.


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## saellys (Dec 5, 2012)

Chilari said:


> I can see things like "grey-eyed Destiny" working in a novel set in the Trojan War, or the flitting moon thing working in a Mills & Boon romance, where pretentious language isn't so out of place, but in fantasy it doesn't feel right.



I actually got turned off of fantasy years ago _because_ of pretentious language. _Lord of the Rings_ and _The Silmarillion_ were major offenders, but I can excuse them given their mythic scope. Kay's purple prose made _The Summer Tree_ an interminable slog for me. Seriously though, almost every fantasy novel I've read does it to some degree--turns a phrase a certain way to sound more poetic and less easily digestible. It's more tolerable and less noticeable in character dialogue, and can be chalked up to inserting realistic medievalisms/fantasyisms, but it still happens. 

_A Song of Ice and Fire_ and _The Prince of Nothing_ were my reintroductions to fantasy, and both series are almost completely devoid of such embroidery, which is why they're still among my favorites even as my tastes have broadened. On the extreme far end of the spectrum, _The Steel Remains_ doesn't bother with anything approaching purple prose in narration _or_ dialogue, and that stuck out to me after reading so much of it elsewhere.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Yes, but you see, the difference between Tolkien and Paolini is that Tolkien was _good_ at using archaic language because he was a scholar. Paolini not so much, especially when his prose sometimes takes a jarring turn into modernity for no good reason. He's not being poetic. THE WORDS. MEAN. NOTHING. Read LeGuin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie". She criticizes this kind of nonsense while praising those who do it right.


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

saellys said:


> _A Song of Ice and Fire_ and _The Prince of Nothing_ were my reintroductions to fantasy, and both series are almost completely devoid of such embroidery, which is why they're still among my favorites even as my tastes have broadened. On the extreme far end of the spectrum, _The Steel Remains_ doesn't bother with anything approaching purple prose in narration _or_ dialogue, and that stuck out to me after reading so much of it elsewhere.



This sort of narrow range of aesthetic taste always puzzles me to some degree. If you look at the breadth and depth of literature, you can find any number of examples of excellent work across all styles of presentation. Whether the words themselves become playful and part of the story (Nabokov, for example), or whether you have dense, richly-textured prose, or whether you move to a very lean, spare style of writing, there are many excellent works out there. 

I like Martin and Bakker, but it would be a sad state of affairs if works written in those styles were the only things to read. Similarly, I like Kay (whom you can't have read much of, if you mistook the prior passages; and whom I should point out only adopted that style for certain works) or, for more descriptive writers, Peake. But again, it wouldn't be good if those styles of writing were the only ones out there. There are so many great works across various styles that I really think people who shut themselves off to the diversity of literature are missing out.

It's like only wanting to eat red beans and rice. I love red beans and rice, but it would suck if that's all you could eat. I like punk rock, but if that's the only kind of music there was, I'd go nuts. There's also jazz, opera, industrial, metal, folk, and so on. Instead of just Hollywood summer blockbusters, we luckily get independent films, foreign movies, &c. 

Although as I write this, perhaps I should be less surprised in the end, because most people I know seem to like very limited music and movies, and they stay in their comfort zone. They're a bit more adventurous with foods, but not much. People are free to like what they like, of course, but when it comes down to being able to 'grok' this sort of outlook, especially on artistic endeavors, I just can't 

People also don't know the definition of 'purple prose,' as the phrase is erroneously applied to any kind of highly-descriptive writing. I think the better view is to limit it to situations where the prose doesn't work because of its overly-ornate character.


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## Rullenzar (Dec 5, 2012)

The prince of Nothing series was great. I enjoyed how far into each characters mind he brought me. It was lacking in the action for me personally but everything else he did made up for it ten fold.


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Yes, but you see, thesis difference between Tolkien and Paolini is that Tolkien was GOOD at using archaic language because he was a scholar. Paolini not so much, especially when his prose sometimes takes a jarring turn into modernity for no good reason. He's not being poetic. THE WORDS. MEAN. NOTHING. Read LeGuin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie". She criticizes this kind of nonsense while praising those who do it right.



Yep. Kay is very good at it as well, though he's only chosen to do it in a few works. His recent work, particularly, lacks it altogether. There's no way you can confuse Kay with Paolini.


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## saellys (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> THE WORDS. MEAN. NOTHING.



I had no trouble figuring out what they meant. 



Steerpike said:


> This sort of narrow range of aesthetic taste always puzzles me to some degree. If you look at the breadth and depth of literature, you can find any number of examples of excellent work across all styles of presentation. Whether the words themselves become playful and part of the story (Nabokov, for example), or whether you have dense, richly-textured prose, or whether you move to a very lean, spare style of writing, there are many excellent works out there.



I can see how you could take a "narrow range of aesthetic taste" away from my previous post, because I didn't specify that once I started reading fantasy again and branched out beyond Martin and Bakker, I find richer prose a lot more enjoyable now. Hence my defending the maligned passages earlier in this thread.



Steerpike said:


> I like Martin and Bakker, but it would be a sad state of affairs if works written in those styles were the only things to read.



No argument here. 



Steerpike said:


> Similarly, I like Kay (whom you can't have read much of, if you mistook the prior passages; and whom I should point out only adopted that style for certain works)



You're right. I've only read _The Summer Tree_. 



Steerpike said:


> or, for more descriptive writers, Peake. But again, it wouldn't be good if those styles of writing were the only ones out there. There are so many great works across various styles that I really think people who shut themselves off to the diversity of literature are missing out.



I think so too.



Steerpike said:


> Although as I write this, perhaps I should be less surprised in the end, because most people I know seem to like very limited music and movies, and they stay in their comfort zone. They're a bit more adventurous with foods, but not much. People are free to like what they like, of course, but when it comes down to being able to 'grok' this sort of outlook, especially on artistic endeavors, I just can't



Like I said, I don't think this way, but I will take a minute to defend that outlook. There is absolutely nothing wrong with limiting one's entertainment intake to media that does not challenge one in the slightest. A lot of people in the world are not voracious readers, and/or do not take the time to engage with media beyond the surface level. While that unfortunately sometimes leads to the admonishment that those of us who do think critically about what we consume should just "enjoy it for what it is," there is nevertheless nothing at all wrong with dropping ten bucks to see _Avengers_ and turning off your brain for a couple hours. We who like our content deep and our analysis deeper are prone to a superiority complex, which gets expressed in benign ways for the most part, but is no less troubling and unhealthy. If someone doesn't feel like decoding _The Dragon Waiting_, absolutely nobody at all is hurt by that, not even the person who prefers not to intellectually engage with their media. 



Rullenzar said:


> The prince of Nothing series was great. I enjoyed how far into each characters mind he brought me. It was lacking in the action for me personally but everything else he did made up for it ten fold.



What I loved the most was that so much of the cultural development happened through Kellhus's eyes, in realtime as he figured out how to manipulate everyone around him. Bakker's level of insight, and the seamless way he incorporated it in the narrative with almost no exposition, is a huge influence on my writing now.



Steerpike said:


> There's no way you can confuse Kay with Paolini.



I did, so I guess it's possible.


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

saellys said:


> There is absolutely nothing wrong with limiting one's entertainment intake to media that does not challenge one in the slightest.



I'm not saying it is wrong, however I don't understand the mindset, honestly, and I'm glad we're not limited to such offerings when it comes to finding things to enjoy.



saellys said:


> I did, so I guess it's possible.



Let me revise: no person who is reasonably familiar with both authors is likely to make that mistake. Even if all you'd read was Fionavar Tapestry, which is the work of Kay's that is written in a more mythical/poetic style, I don't think the mistake is likely if you've looked seriously at both that work and Paolini. Kay actually makes it work. If you don't like the style to begin with and aren't open to it no matter whether it is done well or poorly, then I can see the lines blurring. It's similar to what you commonly hear a person say when confronted with a new style of music:  all X sounds the same (X being jazz, metal, pop, rap, or whatever). When you delve into it you find they're not the same at all, but those who aren't receptive to the style aren't likely to develop the 'ear' to determine what within that style is good and what is bad.

As noted above, Kay's other works don't follow that style and become increasingly more like what is currently popular, in terms of style, as you move through his bibliography (though still better written than most).


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## tlbodine (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Yes, but you see, the difference between Tolkien and Paolini is that Tolkien was _good_ at using archaic language because he was a scholar. Paolini not so much, especially when his prose sometimes takes a jarring turn into modernity for no good reason. He's not being poetic. THE WORDS. MEAN. NOTHING. Read LeGuin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie". She criticizes this kind of nonsense while praising those who do it right.



This.  

I haven't read any of the Paolini books myself, so maybe I'm missing some context, but the quoted passages ring hollow.  They feel vague, which is exactly the opposite of what you want in a poetic description.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

saellys said:


> I had no trouble figuring out what they meant.



Only if you use the most literal and pedantic definition of meaning. Yes, the words themselves have definitions, of which I am knowledgable. And yes, they are arranged in a technically grammatically correct manner. And yes, it might be argued, though it approaches the vanishing point of reason to do so, that they convey what might be called (if one is inclined to great charity) some kind of complete thought. But what do they _MEAN_? The words have no significance, no substance, no life. They say absolutely nothing of worth. They have neither beauty nor utility. They are pointless, _meaningless_, insufferable fluff. This is not poetry. It's a try-hard's _attempt_ at poetry. If I were a pessimistic and sneering sort, I might think that these passages were designed not to capture the imagination of the reader, but to flaunt the author's vocabulary. And what's worse, this line:



> The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living.



This is the opening line of the book. 

[video=youtube_share;kiq9g-1fSSg]http://youtu.be/kiq9g-1fSSg[/video]


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

tlbodine said:


> This.
> 
> I haven't read any of the Paolini books myself, so maybe I'm missing some context, but the quoted passages ring hollow.  They feel vague, which is exactly the opposite of what you want in a poetic description.



That last one, as I've said, was the book's opening line, so no context (should be) needed. I'm not exactly a poetic authority, but I know fluff when I see it.


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## tlbodine (Dec 5, 2012)

"The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."  

This is probably the most egregious of the batch.  Unless there are some sort of musical zombies in here, somehow I doubt that the dead have songs.  Unless this means that "the songs of the dead" means "songs sung FOR the dead" which is basically the definition of "lamentations", so that just makes the line tautological.  

If it had been "The songs of the dead are lamentations FOR the living," that at least would kind of have some sort of meaning.  But that's not what it says.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Only if you use the most literal and pedantic definition of meaning. Yes, the words themselves have definitions, of which I am knowledgable. And yes, they are arranged in a technically grammatically correct manner. And yes, it might be argued, though it approaches the vanishing point of reason to do so, that they convey what might be called (if one is inclined to great charity) some kind of complete thought. But what do they _MEAN_? The words have no significance, no substance, no life. They say absolutely nothing of worth.



They are also taken completely out of context. Any wierdly worded sentence can become nonsensical out of context. Here, let me grab a book at random:



> His spine-clamp exploded in light, flashing alternately red and blue.





> During Apert, things became complicated as the wall ceased to exist for ten days.





> "Wait a minute," I said, "you're saying I can't predict the Geometers' inability to see the freckle without erecting a replica of the whole universe within my imagination?"


_
WHAT DOES IT MEEEAAAN!?_



Mindfire said:


> That last one, as I've said, was the book's opening line, so no context (should be) needed. I'm not exactly a poetic authority, but I know fluff when I see it.



In that case, it probably just means that thinking about dead people makes you sad.

Now, I'm not saying this kind of writing can't be pretentious and annoying, but it's an exaggeration to say it doesn't mean anything. Words always mean _something_ - that's why they are words.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

And yet! Here's the kicker- these phrases are just as meaningless IN context. Can the same be said of your quotations?


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## Graylorne (Dec 5, 2012)

Perhaps interesting for the Eragon haters. Just found this wiki site where someone murders the Inheritance books chapter by chapter. www.eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com

Pray no-one is going to do this to *your* books


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Graylorne said:


> Perhaps interesting for the Eragon haters. Just found this wiki site where someone murders the Inheritance books chapter by chapter. www.eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com
> 
> Pray no-one is going to do this to your books



I don't _hate_ Eragon exactly. But yeah I plan to do all in my power to prevent that from happening to me.


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

You know, my condition makes reading meaning and double-meaning into words very difficult, but I had no trouble with any of those lines. Maybe it comes from reading Lovecraft and Joyce all day, but I actually get what he's saying. No trouble at all. 

 I actually kind of like the lamentations of the living line.


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## saellys (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> I actually kind of like the lamentations of the living line.



Ditto. I find it really evocative, and interpret as the only thing the dead get to hear is the living mourning for them, which sounds completely awful for all parties involved. I don't know or care if that's what Paolini was going for--sentences like that are meant to be interpreted widely depending on the reader.


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## psychotick (Dec 5, 2012)

Hi,

I actually quite like them, the first two anyway. They're quite nice poetic visualisations of things that could probably said more easily. But you don't always want to say things more easily. I mean for the first one the author could have just said 'war is destined and coming soon', but would you want to? Or for the second he could have said 'something fluttered', but why?

The third one I really like, but it is open to a number of different interpretations. My favourite would be that its a poetic idea that what you regret in life will become the song of your death, an allegory to an unpleasent afterlife. So in that way it could be a warning. But it could also, and without the context it's hard to be sure though it seems most likely, simply be painting a word picture of that mournful afterlife.

Writing is an art, and with art there's often many ways to get a message across. And of course some people will like one artistic style, some another. Maybe you like Picasso's blue period but not his cubism. So the question becomes, is this bad writing? Or is it simply writing that's not to people's personal taste?

In my view the only way for writing to truly fail is if it cannot get it's message across to the readers, and these seem clear enough.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

*is horrified*

Well, there's no accounting for taste as they say. Personally, I wouldn't call writing pure art, as pure art really has (and needs) no purpose. Not so with writing. Writing is applied imagination, art combined with utility. I have little patience for the pretentious, in my own writing or anyone else's.


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

saellys said:


> Ditto. I find it really evocative, and interpret as the only thing the dead get to hear is the living mourning for them, which sounds completely awful for all parties involved. I don't know or care if that's what Paolini was going for--sentences like that are meant to be interpreted widely depending on the reader.



 My interpretation was a little different - that the songs of the dead (ie, songs revolving around the dead, for the dead, etc.) are the lamentations. Which is very Howard-esque, in my opinion.



> Well, there's no accounting for taste as they say. Personally, I wouldn't call writing pure art, as pure art really has (and needs) no purpose.



 Generally agreed, and I think the artistic aspect of writing is exclusively in the style - and like most people on this forum, I don't like Paolini's style of writing or his narratives.

 That said, had Homer been the writer of these lines no one would be criticizing them.


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## saellys (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> *is horrified*
> 
> Well, there's no accounting for taste as they say. Personally, I wouldn't call writing pure art, as pure art really has (and needs) no purpose. Not so with writing. Writing is applied imagination, art combined with utility. I have little patience for the pretentious, in my own writing or anyone else's.



Ask a painter if their art has and needs no purpose sometime. 

As for pretention, the phrase "there's no accounting for taste" fits the bill as I see it. 



Shockley said:


> My interpretation was a little different - that the songs of the dead (ie, songs revolving around the dead, for the dead, etc.) are the lamentations. Which is very Howard-esque, in my opinion.



Oh, I like the circular logic of that, too. 



Shockley said:


> That said, had Homer been the writer of these lines no one would be criticizing them.



Real talk.


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

If you guys want the truly bizarre or nonsensical when it comes to writing, Paolini's not even in the running: 

    Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> Generally agreed, and I think the artistic aspect of writing is exclusively in the style - and like most people on this forum, I don't like Paolini's style of writing or his narratives. That said, had Homer been the writer of these lines no one would be criticizing them.



I wouldn't say that. Shakespeare grates on my nerves and some of the Greek playwrights made me want to slam my head into a wall. I am not above criticizing classics.



saellys said:


> Ask a painter if their art has and needs no purpose sometime.
> 
> As for pretention, the phrase "there's no accounting for taste" fits the bill as I see it.



My point is that art is not _utilitarian_. It does not require a purpose or application to justify its existence. It is what it is and that's all there is to it. Writing is different, because of it's very nature, it is (*snicker*) burdened with glorious porpoise purpose. Also, the use of an idiom is not pretentious. It is a shorthand that allows me to say "I think I am in the right, but since this is a largely subjective matter, let's agree to disagree and leave it at that" but in far fewer words, which is useful as I sent that particular message from my phone.



saellys said:


> Oh, I like the circular logic of that, too.


But circular logic is BAD. -_-


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

> But circular logic is BAD. -_-



 Pourquoi? The argument against circular logic involves circular logic - 'circular logic is bad because circular logic is bad because circular logis is bad because circular logic' and so on and so forth.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> If you guys want the truly bizarre or nonsensical when it comes to writing, Paolini's not even in the running:
> 
> Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.



If that was written any later than the 19th century, it is nothing less than utter fail. If it was written during the 18th or 9th century, it probably would have been regarded as quaintly archaic. If it was written before the 18th century, then it might be justified, but I still don't care for it.


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> If that was written any later than the 19th century, it is nothing less than utter fail. If it was written during the 18th or 9th century, it probably would have been regarded as quaintly archaic. If it was written before the 18th century, then it might be justified, but I still don't care for it.



It is James Joyce, if I'm not mistaken. 20th Century. It's not from _Ulysses_, so I'm guessing _Finnegan's Wake_.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> Pourquoi? The argument against circular logic involves circular logic - 'circular logic is bad because circular logic is bad because circular logis is bad because circular logic' and so on and so forth.



I never gave an argument, only a statement.



Steerpike said:


> It is James Joyce, if I'm not mistaken. 20th Century. It's not from Ulysses, so I'm guessing Finnegan's Wake.



Good lord. I am so happy not to be an English major. And doubly happy I never had to read that in high school. Is it meant to be humorous? Perhaps a parody of archaic language? Otherwise, just... no.


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Good lord. I am so happy not to be an English major.



Actually, Joyce's book of short stories call _Dubliners_ is excellent. It is written in a normal style of writing, and I enjoyed the stories a lot. _Ulysses_ is interesting, though it take a bit more to read. I've only thumbed through_ Finnegan's Wake _and read excerpts here and there, and it seems on the surface to be relatively incomprehensible. It's not, I realize, for those who understand exactly what they're looking at, but I doubt I'll make that level of commitment to the work.


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

Indeed, Steerpike, it's Finnegans Wake.

 It's meant, of course, to be read out loud.


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> It's meant, of course, to be read out loud.



Is it? I didn't know that. Does sounding it out make a difference? I know I used that approach when I had to read Chaucer in middle english, but I never thought to try it with Joyce.


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

Indeed. Joyce was blind by that time, so he had Samuel Beckett (the Samuel Beckett, even) sit down and write what he said - since Joyce couldn't read what Beckett wrote, he couldn't correct spellings or individual words so it's best understood out loud.

 Edit: We know, for instance, that Joyce preferred the spelling 'kwork' to 'quark' but didn't bother correcting Beckett.


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## Ankari (Dec 5, 2012)

> "The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."



I'm not sure how this can be considered purple prose.  The living lament the dead.  Lament means to deeply mourn.   Some examples would be crying or wailing.  So the crying and wailing of the living serves as songs of the dead.  A lengthy way of saying the living who lament with cries and wails are creating a requiem for the dead.

I think I'm on board with Steerpike here.  This attack on descriptive narratives reminds me of the bully complex I recall through my youth.  If you don't understand something, or if you are envious of something, you attack it.  Don't attack art, understand it.

There was a time when writing was entirely considered an art form.  Remember the phrase "paint the scene with words?"  That is exactly what I think these examples do.  Do you have to think about the phrase a bit?  Why not?

I liken this to the expanding selection of garbage rap.  It's all entertainment and requires very little, if any, thought to consume it.  Then there are those *artists* that are wordsmiths.  They make you think about the lyrics.  They require you to become an active party in the sharing of ideas.  I'll never buy the piles of garbage rap (and other music) but I can't wait to buy the *artists.*


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> Indeed. Joyce was blind by that time, so he had Samuel Beckett (the Samuel Beckett, even) sit down and write what he said - since Joyce couldn't read what Beckett wrote, he couldn't correct spellings or individual words so it's best understood out loud.
> 
> Edit: We know, for instance, that Joyce preferred the spelling 'kwork' to 'quark' but didn't bother correcting Beckett.



Thank you, Shockley. I didn't know any of this. I don't know much about Joyce's life, I just know some of his works. As I said, I thought _Dubliners_ was very good, and _Ulysses _was intellectually interesting. Maybe I'll give _Finnegan's Wake_ another look and try this approach, just to see how it sounds to me.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Ankari said:


> I'm not sure how this can be considered purple prose.  The living lament the dead.  Lament means to deeply mourn.   Some examples would be crying or wailing.  So the crying and wailing of the living serves as songs of the dead.  A lengthy way of saying the living who lament with cries and wails are creating a requiem for the dead.
> 
> I think I'm on board with Steerpike here.  This attack on descriptive narratives reminds me of the bully complex I recall through my youth.  If you don't understand something, or if you are envious of something, you attack it.  Don't attack art, understand it.
> 
> ...



I don't think that's a fair comparison. The sentence you quoted doesn't make me think. It does not cause me to ponder this thing we call life, or anything else of note. It only makes me roll my eyes.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> Indeed. Joyce was blind by that time, so he had Samuel Beckett (the Samuel Beckett, even) sit down and write what he said - since Joyce couldn't read what Beckett wrote, he couldn't correct spellings or individual words so it's best understood out loud.
> 
> Edit: We know, for instance, that Joyce preferred the spelling 'kwork' to 'quark' but didn't bother correcting Beckett.



That does shed some light on the situation. But then, why hasn't the book been reprinted with corrected spellings?


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

Two reasons:

 1. That was the edition Joyce approved of, and Joyce was making up words anyway. What's the correct spelling of a nonsense word?

 2. Who has the stuff to correct Samuel goddamn Beckett?


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

Ankari said:


> I think I'm on board with Steerpike here.  This attack on descriptive narratives reminds me of the bully complex I recall through my youth.  If you don't understand something, or if you are envious of something, you attack it.  Don't attack art, understand it.
> 
> There was a time when writing was entirely considered an art form.  Remember the phrase "paint the scene with words?"  That is exactly what I think these examples do.  Do you have to think about the phrase a bit?  Why not?



I think you're right. The potential pitfall with dense, descriptive writing is that it is hard to do well. Peake was a genius at it. Nabokov didn't write in that highly descriptive style, but was a genius with words. People who try to write in that manner but can't pull it off end up with a disaster on their hands. You get enough of those disasters and you have people thinking that any kind of highly descriptive writing is 'purple prose' and should be avoided. It's nonsense, of course. Then you have another group of people who confuse their subjective taste with objective standards of writing. A more dense style of prose can be done extremely well - look at Peake in fantasy, Conrad outside of fantasy, for some great writing. Discounting it out of hand tells you something about the reader and almost nothing about the work they are discounting.


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> Thank you, Shockley. I didn't know any of this. I don't know much about Joyce's life, I just know some of his works. As I said, I thought _Dubliners_ was very good, and _Ulysses _was intellectually interesting. Maybe I'll give _Finnegan's Wake_ another look and try this approach, just to see how it sounds to me.



 Missed this.

 Dubliners is wonderful. If you like that, you might want to grab A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It's about halfway between Dubliners and Ulysses stylistically.


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## Steerpike (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> Dubliners is wonderful. If you like that, you might want to grab A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It's about halfway between Dubliners and Ulysses stylistically.



I actually have a copy of _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ in my to-read stack of books, but on thinking of it I don't think I've really looked at it. I'll have to try to fit it in. My stack of books grows faster than I can possibly read them.


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## Shockley (Dec 5, 2012)

Anyway, I posted the Joyce to try and illustrate a point, but now I want to spell it out with words.

 - Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald have dominated American literature since the 1920s, and they both preferred a sparse, empty writing style. It's a beautiful style and one of my favorites, but it's *their* style. It's something they created and most of us accept it as a matter of convenience. Had we been born in 1900, we'd have no problem endorsing what Paolini did in that book and just focused on the terrible narrative (and been confused by what we were reading, since fantasy was still in its early stages).

 - The idea that there's one correct style of writing is ridiculous. Even though Hemingway was the sparse writer, he loved Joyce and Joyce loved Hemingway. They were able to appreciate writers with different styles and (especially in Joyce's case) experiment in other styles. 

 - I'm thinking of painting at this moment - some people paint like Titian and some people paint like Matisse. You'll have your preferences, granted, but you should at least accept them both as artists and maybe, just maybe, be willing to enjoy both.


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## Chilari (Dec 5, 2012)

Shockley said:


> Pourquoi? The argument against circular logic involves circular logic - 'circular logic is bad because circular logic is bad because circular logis is bad because circular logic' and so on and so forth.



No, circular logic is bad because it requires the premise to be the answer in order for the answer to be the one you want. It fails to logically lead from premise to argument to conclusion, because assumptions are made about the conclusion in order to conceive the premise.


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## tlbodine (Dec 5, 2012)

Chilari said:


> No, circular logic is bad because it requires the premise to be the answer in order for the answer to be the one you want. It fails to logically lead from premise to argument to conclusion, because assumptions are made about the conclusion in order to conceive the premise.



Yes, precisely.  Which is, of course, what we mean when we say the sentence is meaningless.  It fails to give any information.  "The songs of the dead are lamentations of the living" delivers no more meaning than the similarly tautological sentence "The red couch was a reddish color."


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## Ankari (Dec 5, 2012)

tlbodine said:


> Yes, precisely.  Which is, of course, what we mean when we say the sentence is meaningless.  It fails to give any information.  "The songs of the dead are lamentations of the living" delivers no more meaning than the similarly tautological sentence "The red couch was a reddish color."



Except that lament doesn't mean song (for the dead).  The whole point of the sentence is to show how the audible manifestations of the mournful living are songs of the dead.


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## psychotick (Dec 5, 2012)

Hi,

Writing is not art? I think it is. Sure there may be a purpose behind its creation, i.e. to get meaning across, but surely it goes beyond that. 

I mean think of something like the instructions to put together a piece of furniture. You know the stuff - slot part A into the hole in part B. This is writing of a sort. But it's not art, and I don't think many people would want to read a novel written in this style. They want to read something that captures their imagination and their hearts. 

So does time pass quickly? Or does it fly by? (Even though it doesn't have wings and can't actually take to the sky.) Does blood curdle like milk? (This might actually be possible if you acidified someones blood, though of course they'd die.) Or do people just feel afraid? Does death prowl the streets looking for new victims? (Anthropomorphisising death.) Or are people just dying?

Writing is an art though it comes with a purpose. The purpose is to communicate the message, something done in any set of assembly instructions. But the art comes in making that message real to the reader. Making them feel. I mean read some of my old micro textbooks. You'll discover quite quickly just how dry and boring a message can be. And how much more enjoyable and engrossing a novel about bacteria can be.

So to the OP. The question is do you understand the message being given by the selections? And does it make you feel something more than just, 'war's coming', 'something's fluttering', and 'deaths sad'? If you understand the message, the writing has succeeded. And if you don't feel something from reading it then the art is either not to your taste or else has failed.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Devor (Dec 5, 2012)

Mindfire, while I don't really like the lines, I think you're over reacting.  The bird-across-moon imagery is just fine when he's looking at some movement inside a dragon egg, and the gray-eyed destiny line - while pretentious - just means that the events which just happened are going to start a war.

_"The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."_

What if I wrote it this way?

_The weeping of their widows was the only song the Red Fire Soldiers had left sing._

Okay, it's still a little _much_, unless they were connected to music somehow, but the words do have meaning.

What I mean to say is, it's more that the prose is more ambitious than the author's skill levels to execute, rather than that they have no meaning.

But there are more than enough people on the web who harp on Paolini.  Just so long as we can keep the conversation in some ways useful.


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## Mindfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Devor said:


> Mindfire, while I don't really like the lines, I think you're over reacting.  The bird-across-moon imagery is just fine when he's looking at some movement inside a dragon egg, and the gray-eyed destiny line - while pretentious - just means that the events which just happened are going to start a war.
> 
> _"The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."_
> 
> ...



I think that sentence is missing a word or so...


> The weeping of their widows was the only song the Red Fire Soldiers had left *to* sing.



And this thread was intended to be about the trope in general, not just Paolini's (ab)use of it.


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## Shockley (Dec 6, 2012)

tlbodine said:


> Yes, precisely.  Which is, of course, what we mean when we say the sentence is meaningless.  It fails to give any information.  "The songs of the dead are lamentations of the living" delivers no more meaning than the similarly tautological sentence "The red couch was a reddish color."



 The sentence, as nearly everyone on 'my' side of this argument has indicated, has more meaning than that - at least to us. 

 The important thing for everyone to remember here is that just because you yourself can not comprehend a meaning to something does not mean that there is no meaning - it just means that you yourself can not find it. We're weak mentally, on some level, and all in different ways; this is a difference we should expect.


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## Mindfire (Dec 6, 2012)

Shockley said:


> The sentence, as nearly everyone on 'my' side of this argument has indicated, has more meaning than that - at least to us.
> 
> The important thing for everyone to remember here is that just because you yourself can not comprehend a meaning to something does not mean that there is no meaning - it just means that you yourself can not find it. We're weak mentally, on some level, and all in different ways; this is a difference we should expect.



That doesn't mean the sentence itself has any meaning. It could mean that you're _reading into_ the sentence. Reading into a sentence on the scale you did to squeeze some meaning out of it (though I'm not convinced you succeeded) shouldn't be necessary, especially in a modern fantasy novel.


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## saellys (Dec 6, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> That doesn't mean the sentence itself has any meaning. It could mean that you're _reading into_ the sentence. Reading into a sentence on the scale you did to squeeze some meaning out of it (though I'm not convinced you succeeded) shouldn't be necessary, especially in a modern fantasy novel.



Everybody reads into everything they read, in that everyone has certain associations, the combination of which is completely unique to each of them, which they ascribe to any passage that uses less-than-completely-transparent word choices. The fact that you don't have any associations to ascribe to these passages, and other readers do, does not mean those who do are reading into anything excessively to derive meaning. It means our associations are stronger. A couple people have mentioned a background in Shakespeare and Homer and various other classics, which means those passages had much stronger associations than they did even for me, since I don't have that background. 

Every piece of literature means something different to each reader, so why is it so hard to accept that some readers will quickly and easily derive meaning from a particular sentence while others won't?


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## Mindfire (Dec 6, 2012)

saellys said:


> Everybody reads into everything they read, in that everyone has certain associations, the combination of which is completely unique to each of them, which they ascribe to any passage that uses less-than-completely-transparent word choices. The fact that you don't have any associations to ascribe to these passages, and other readers do, does not mean those who do are reading into anything excessively to derive meaning. It means our associations are stronger. A couple people have mentioned a background in Shakespeare and Homer and various other classics, which means those passages had much stronger associations than they did even for me, since I don't have that background.
> 
> Every piece of literature means something different to each reader, so why is it so hard to accept that some readers will quickly and easily derive meaning from a particular sentence while others won't?



It's not hard to accept per ce, but it is hard to understand why anyone would defend the sequel to Eragon.


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## saellys (Dec 6, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> It's not hard to accept per ce, but it is hard to understand why anyone would defend the sequel to Eragon.



I didn't. I defended the example sentences you posted, without any knowledge of who wrote them. Since this was supposed to be a thread about the trope in general and not Paolini's abuse of it, that seemed like the thing to do.


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## Mindfire (Dec 6, 2012)

saellys said:


> I didn't. I defended the example sentences you posted, without any knowledge of who wrote them. Since this was supposed to be a thread about the trope in general and not Paolini's abuse of it, that seemed like the thing to do.



Yes, but I used Paolini because his writing was (or so I thought) an instance where we could all agree the trope had been abused, since his writing is rather infamous for doing just that. I mean, it's okay if you like Eragon. I enjoyed the GI Joe movie. Who am I to judge? But surely you admit it isn't _good_?


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## saellys (Dec 6, 2012)

I haven't read _Eragon_, apart from those three examples, each of which are workable.


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## Mindfire (Dec 6, 2012)

saellys said:


> I haven't read _Eragon_, apart from those three examples, each of which are workable.



Maybe you should. It's surprisingly enjoyable with the right mindset. And you'll see how egregious the purple prose gets. (I think he squeezes the word "surreptitiously" in where it doesn't belong at least twenty times.)


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## tlbodine (Dec 6, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> (I think he squeezes the word "surreptitiously" in where it doesn't belong at least twenty times.)


How very sneaky of him   *boom tish*


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## Mindfire (Dec 6, 2012)

tlbodine said:


> How very sneaky of him   *boom tish*



What an awful play on words. Lol


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## Shockley (Dec 6, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> That doesn't mean the sentence itself has any meaning. It could mean that you're _reading into_ the sentence. Reading into a sentence on the scale you did to squeeze some meaning out of it (though I'm not convinced you succeeded) shouldn't be necessary, especially in a modern fantasy novel.



 Good luck reading something and not reading anything into it. That's how the mind tends to work.

 Furthermore, I have no intention of defending Paolini - I just think that's a poor example of how bad the work is. This, for example, is a paragraph from Eldest (found with a simple google search, even) that I think was pulled off poorly. 



> Eragon rose and strapped on Zar'roc and his bow, then bent and lifted Snowfire's saddle. A line of pain sheared through his torso, driving him to the floor, where he writhed, scrabbling at his back. It felt like he was being sawed in half. Saphira growled as the ripping sensation reached her. She tried to soothe him with her own mind but was unable to alleviate his suffering. Her tail instinctually lifted, as if to fight.


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## Mindfire (Dec 6, 2012)

That is pretty bad. While sort of melodramatic, it doesn't feel as bad to me as the ones I quoted. I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction against the purple stuff.


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## Shockley (Dec 7, 2012)

Well, there are some great pure purple writers, too:



> Ships did not put unasked into this port, where dusky sorcerers wove awful spells in the murk of sacrificial smoke mounting eternally from blood-stained altars where naked women screamed, and where Set, the Old Serpent, arch-demon of the Hyborians but god of the Stygians, was said to writhe his shining coils among his worshipers.



 That's the passage that made me decide to write fantasy, for example.


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## Graylorne (Dec 7, 2012)

But that's not purple prose, Shockley. It's old-fashioned, but every word is in the right place. I wouldn't mind writing a piece like that. I've no problem with dusky sorcerers, but I object to gray-eyed Destiny. That's the difference between the real thing and a wannabe.


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## Mindfire (Dec 7, 2012)

Now see Shockley, THAT passage is poetic. And it has meaning and substance. I got what it was saying on the first try and it said it in a beautiful manner. That is archaic done write. (pun!)


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## Steerpike (Dec 7, 2012)

I think that is right - that is not 'purple' prose, to me, which has the connotation of poorly done or overwrought prose. You can find good examples of highly descriptive writing, and even very dense and descriptive writing, much of which breaks the so-called 'rules' of writing we hear about now. Think of Howard and Leiber, for example. Peake is about as dense and descriptive as you can get, but it's brilliant. None of those authors deal in purple prose, in my view.


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## Shockley (Dec 7, 2012)

If you guys don't consider that purple prose, then that's great and I'm glad that Howard is finally getting some credit. He took a lot of crap for 'purple prose' during his lifetime, which fueled his suicide at thirty.

 I'm just saying, we'll view Paolini's writing as different eighty years on.


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## Steerpike (Dec 7, 2012)

I thought he killed himself as part of a suicide pact with his father upon the death of his mother; except his father didn't go through with it. He was a strange person. I really enjoy his writing, though.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 7, 2012)

I am sorry, but I have locked this thread.

Reasons:

While discussing the works of Fantasy authors is positive for our Community, focusing on how bad some works are supposed to be (which was the original purpose of this thread) is something aggressive and negative to do.

We have to treat the works of authors respectfully when discussing them, and avoid trying to bash any of them.


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