The Cloud Forest

Peter Matthiessen wrote about his travels and his books were written partly as an adventurer and partly as a naturalist. In that manner they harken back to a style popular in a prior century. The Cloud Forest was first published in 1961, in a genre that was already dated. But his prose was contemporary. His style changed radically at the end of his career, from first person to multiple narrator and he rightfully won some awards and accolades. But his skill was evident decades earlier as it is here. 

"A simple grace prevails here, in the postures of children waiting for nothing in the doorway, the young girl breast-feeding her baby, the old man in the corner with his hands folded in his lap—the grace of people who have never gone anywhere and never will go. Only their grief is ungraceful, and perhaps grief should be..."

An average writer may not write something so eloquent in the whole of their life.

Richard Rodriguez

From the book titled Days Of Obligation, subtitled An Argument with my Mexican Father. Richard Rodriguez is a great writer in search of a great book. his use of language and context can be powerful and his observations of people insightful. This books meanders, nearly directionless. It's a survey not a story, and it ends not abruptly, but  beautifully.  I wish he wrote fiction.

"A crow alights upon a humming wire, bobs up and down, needles the lice within his vest, surveys with clicking eyes the field, the cloud of mites, then dips into the milky air and flies away."

The Subterraneans

There is a reason that Kerouac gets so much credit.  I'd explain more but it's not necessary. The following is a quote from The Subterraneans, published in 1958. My copy has coffee stains on it which is all too appropriate. It's a book of rambling run on sentences, not absent punctuation, but instead more often punctuated with pauses than periods. 

"Then she was running down the street with her $2, going to the store long before it opened, going for coffee in the cafeteria, sitting at the table alone, digging the world at last, the gloomy hats, the glistening sidewalks, the signs announcing baked flounder, the reflections of rain in paneglass and in pillar mirror, the beauty of the food counters displaying cold spreads and mountains of crullers and the steam of the coffee urn."

Lawrence Durrell: Bitter Lemons

Bitter Lemons is an autobiographical work by Lawrence Durrell. He lived on the island of Cyprus for 3 years, and then left as the turmoil of the mid 1950s there ramped up. In 1959 the island was granted independence from the United Kingdom. But the book isn't about the political struggle, it's about people, Greeks and Turks and Cypriots; and Durrell is a master at describing people.

"No Greek can sit still without fidgeting, tapping a foot or a pencil, jerking a knee, or making popping noises with his tongue. The Turk has a monolithic poise, an air of reptilian concentration and silence. it is with just such an air that a chameleon can sit, hour after hour, upon a shrub, staring unwinkingly at the world, living apparently in that state of suspended judgement which can be summed up in the Arabic word kayf.I have seen Sabri loading logs, shouting at peasants, even running down a street; but never has he conveyed the slightest feeling of energy being expended. His actions and words had the smoothness of inevitability; they flowed from him like honey from a spoon."

His characters are old and young, comic and tragic and in this book he's working with a cast of at least ostensibly real people. One can never know if they truly are, but they are while it's leaves are open.

Flannery O'Connor

The very first sentence of The Violent Bear It Away:

"Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was sitting and bury it in a Christian way, with the sign of the Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up."

It is an incredibly powerful run-on sentence and a start to a book you can't stop. Front loading a story like that is unusual, but effective if the skill is there. Flannery O'Connor is virtually unmatched. The Violent Bear It Away was her second and last book. She was considered to be of the southern gothic style and you can see why. She died of lupus in 1964, she was only 39. More here.