Raymo on Tolkien

"J.R.R. Tolkien, the Master of Middle Earth, suggested that the world of magic and monsters is only another view of adjectives.  The mind that thought of 'light," 'heavy,' 'gray,' 'yellow,' 'still,' and 'swift' also conceived of the magic that let heavy things fly and turned lead into gold and stones into running water.  By contrast, the world of the twentieth century is by and large a world of nouns and verbs, a world of objects moving in space and time, a world devoid of magic.  What we see is what we get.

Except...for that time each afternoon at the pond where the boys fished.  From adjectives, I let my mind invent the old bass in his lair.  He was as light as a cloud in that watery element or lay on the bottom like a smooth stone.   He hid in the gray shadows of the pickerelweed or flashed yellow like refracted sunlight.  He was as still as the reflection of the moon in the water or as swift as the whirligig on the glazed surface of the pond.  Adjectives are the stuff of imagination."

                    - Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night; An Astronomical Pilgrimage, pp. 115, 116

I pepper my prose with adjectives.  I like a dish with some zest: not so much that it overwhelms the senses, but enough to tantalize and stimulate.  I like reaching for the less frequent turn of phrase, the more exotic, just a dash, where it is a perfect pairing.  Mine is a world of magic and monsters, together in the same dish. 

Comments

[Cheryl]

Oh, that looks great, thanks!

[Tim Abbott]

I recommend Chet Raymo enthusiastically, Cheryl, and this book in particular.

I, too, try to get the mix right, somewhere between the unadorned prose and that which is smothered in cream.

[Cheryl]

I've been thinking about this myself, lately. I've been running a little bit adjective anorexic, just because I've been seeing a lot of very bejeweled fiction. I still haven't arrived myself at an idea what's really just right.