As you know, I cannot subsist on nothing but a diet of Poul Anderson rereading and am currently rereading elsewhere. However, Anderson has taught me to look out both for pathetic fallacies and for descriptive passages appealing to at least three of the senses. Thus, in Dornford Yates' She Fell Among Thieves (London, 1935), a storm has been building. Then, Chandos and Virginia find that they have been locked in his room:
"'...Every one of these doors has a bolt - on the other side.'
"As though to attest the saying, a sullen grumble of thunder came rolling over the hills.
"The storm had begun." (p. 205)
Thus ends CHAPTER VII. Soon after that:
"The storm was fast approaching. I could see the flicker of the lightning, and the heavy roll of the thunder was louder with every flash. As I glanced at the open window, I heard the forests shiver at the touch of the running footman that goes before : and the air was definitely cooler - I could smell the rain that was falling some two miles off." (p. 208)
Reading this, I think of Poul Anderson who has helped me toward a finer appreciation of Dornford Yates' prose. In fact, I have stopped reading during a suspenseful action sequence in order to post.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! You are making me regret how I had never heard of or read any of Dornford Yates' stories before you started rereading and commenting on them! When it comes to literature written in the 1920's and 1930's, I'm most familiar with the works of GK Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy L. Sayers, John Dickson Carr, and Margery Allingham. And what all of them, except Waugh, had in common, in this context, were them being writers of mysteries.
Sean
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