The First Man On The Sun

Richard Henry Wilde Dillard writing as R. H. W. Dillard, is better known as a poet than a novelist and it shows in his prose. Born in 1937, Dillard is still alive, actually published What Is Owed the Dead, only in 2011. But of the dozen books he's written, only two are prose. This book, The First Man On The Sun was published in 1983.

His deep connection to verse is self-evident in his alternately clever and self-indulgent prose. Lines like "The dry hard land bursts all around into bloom; the bloom fades away."  Hemingway would have broken that into two sentences and called it good. But being that clever makes one want to be clever as well. Dense well used language is inspirational like that. But his indulgent prose has a similar appeal. If you ripped it out of the story it would double as verse:

"See and see and see. Trees blurred with a yellow green haze. Trees breaking into bud and bloom. Trees filling with wide green leaves. Trees swaying and snarling in the wind. Trees black and bleak in long steady rain. Trees ringing out with each new spring. Trees moving. Trees walking. Men and women walking, the way of man and of us all."