Apropos of nothing except that I've just been reading your reviews and then Starlady's and Sarah Monette's posts on the Peter Wimsey books: what authors, if any, would you recommend to me for their ability to describe characters (physically or psychologically) in a really memorable fashion?
What an interesting question! I will have to think about it, because off the top of my head I don't know. It's not a quality I read for consciously, although I agree that I notice when it's missing—the absence of physical description is one of the things that can make even a well-plotted, well-spoken book feel thin. I think I tend to fold it into my requirements for an enjoyable prose style. I take it you don't mean just blocking or a visual summary of a character's identifying features: you want something about the character's behavior as described to tell you something about how they work internally as well as what they look like doing it? (I am reminded of Edward Petherbridge as Newman Noggs. Speaking of prose styles, mine in that entry is six years out of date and I can't read it without wanting to rewrite it, but these things happen. So did a lot of weirdly placed semicolons, apparently.)
You've got this wonderful talent for coming at that from an oblique direction that somehow winds up amazingly on point
At the risk of dropping out of this conversation like a cartoon character who's just looked down at the plain air under their feet, may I ask for an example? I'm not sure I can actually separate what you're asking for from the gestalt way I think about characters. (I can pinpoint when I started watching it in actors, though: Gussie Fink-Nottle, 2002.)
and then there's the over-the-top line in the cricket match in Murder Must Advertise where it talks about Peter "opening up wrathful shoulders" and going to town on the game
"Nothing makes a man see red like a sharp rap over the funny-bone, and it was at this moment that Mr. Death Bredon suddenly and regrettably forgot himself."
I have always loved that scene despite not actually understanding anything about the workings of cricket; it is so energetically described that I've always assumed I could diagram it if I had to to and construe at least a provisional version of the rules thereby. (Obviously, I've never tried.)
Dunnett can do it; Sayers can do it; I need more authors to study and think about how they can evoke such a vivid image in such a brief space, while using descriptors that are (for me, anyway) wholly unexpected.
I will try. Peter S. Beagle might be a good starting point; he has a knack for improbable-sounding similes that really work. And I have always loved the introductory description of Schmendrick: "a tall, thin man with an air of resolute bewilderment. He wore an old black cloak, and his eyes were green."
[edit] While out of the house, I also thought of M. John Harrison, Mary Gentle, Elizabeth E. Wein, Ysabeau Wilce, sometimes Patricia McKillip, sometimes A.S. Byatt, Jane Gardam, Margery Allingham, Sarah Monette writng as Katherine Addison, Frederick Nebel on a wholly unpredictable basis, and, perhaps not oddly, a bunch of the mid-century female suspense writers I was reading over the winter—Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Dorothy B. Hughes, Helen Eustis, Vera Caspary, Charlotte Armstrong, Dolores Hitchens. Barbara Hambly, especially in the earlier books of the Benjamin January series. I can't tell if it's significant that most of the authors I've mentioned here are women.
no subject
What an interesting question! I will have to think about it, because off the top of my head I don't know. It's not a quality I read for consciously, although I agree that I notice when it's missing—the absence of physical description is one of the things that can make even a well-plotted, well-spoken book feel thin. I think I tend to fold it into my requirements for an enjoyable prose style. I take it you don't mean just blocking or a visual summary of a character's identifying features: you want something about the character's behavior as described to tell you something about how they work internally as well as what they look like doing it? (I am reminded of Edward Petherbridge as Newman Noggs. Speaking of prose styles, mine in that entry is six years out of date and I can't read it without wanting to rewrite it, but these things happen. So did a lot of weirdly placed semicolons, apparently.)
You've got this wonderful talent for coming at that from an oblique direction that somehow winds up amazingly on point
At the risk of dropping out of this conversation like a cartoon character who's just looked down at the plain air under their feet, may I ask for an example? I'm not sure I can actually separate what you're asking for from the gestalt way I think about characters. (I can pinpoint when I started watching it in actors, though: Gussie Fink-Nottle, 2002.)
and then there's the over-the-top line in the cricket match in Murder Must Advertise where it talks about Peter "opening up wrathful shoulders" and going to town on the game
"Nothing makes a man see red like a sharp rap over the funny-bone, and it was at this moment that Mr. Death Bredon suddenly and regrettably forgot himself."
I have always loved that scene despite not actually understanding anything about the workings of cricket; it is so energetically described that I've always assumed I could diagram it if I had to to and construe at least a provisional version of the rules thereby. (Obviously, I've never tried.)
Dunnett can do it; Sayers can do it; I need more authors to study and think about how they can evoke such a vivid image in such a brief space, while using descriptors that are (for me, anyway) wholly unexpected.
I will try. Peter S. Beagle might be a good starting point; he has a knack for improbable-sounding similes that really work. And I have always loved the introductory description of Schmendrick: "a tall, thin man with an air of resolute bewilderment. He wore an old black cloak, and his eyes were green."
[edit] While out of the house, I also thought of M. John Harrison, Mary Gentle, Elizabeth E. Wein, Ysabeau Wilce, sometimes Patricia McKillip, sometimes A.S. Byatt, Jane Gardam, Margery Allingham, Sarah Monette writng as Katherine Addison, Frederick Nebel on a wholly unpredictable basis, and, perhaps not oddly, a bunch of the mid-century female suspense writers I was reading over the winter—Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Dorothy B. Hughes, Helen Eustis, Vera Caspary, Charlotte Armstrong, Dolores Hitchens. Barbara Hambly, especially in the earlier books of the Benjamin January series. I can't tell if it's significant that most of the authors I've mentioned here are women.