(I can't find an image of a riverboat answering the description of the Jade Gate but here is a picture of one in Vietnam.)
I am not going to look for it at this time of night but I had a book about Isaac Asimov's works. The author suggested that some prose is like clear glass - we look through it at the objects described - whereas another kind of prose is like stained glass - we look at it. Asimov's prose is like clear glass. Anderson's is like both.
On the Jade Gate:
"Two sizable deckhouses bracketed the amidships section, their roofs fancifully curved at the eaves and carved at the ends." (11, p. 158)
We visualize the ship. At least, most of you do. I can't visualize. We also appreciate the language: curved and carved, at eaves and ends. Perfect. I cannot speak for anyone else, let alone for a prolific professional author, but, when I begin to write a sentence like that, I try to complete it with as much alliteration and assonance as possible. We start to enjoy the words quite independently of whatever it is that they describe. Are we depraved by nature or deprived by nurture? As an Aldous Huxley character observed, "Black ladders lack bladders."
Christmas preparations are like a black hole sucking in all the energy that would usually go into blogging. Some people here celebrate on the Solstice, 21 December. One couple here parties on Christmas Eve afternoon, then repairs to the Water Witch or the Toll House. Sheila is having another of her musical evenings here tomorrow. Posts will be sparse.
5 comments:
Solstice greetings!
Kaor, Paul!
That book you read about the works of Asimov sounds exactly like one I too had read, long ago. I'll check, but I don't think I still have it. The author of that book also talked about Asimov's prose being like clear glass. And nothing like stained glass!
Yes, when he had to, Anderson could write plain, clear glass prose, in both his non fictions and fictional works. And PA was a master of literary stained glass prose. It was Anderson's ability to vary how he wrote that keeps his works interesting. Asimov tended to become too flat, colorless, and frankly boring in his longer stories.
I think the winter solstice used to fall on December 25 in the Julian calendar, meaning Christmas used to fall on the same date. The Greogorian reform calendar moved the solstice to December 21, but the feast of the Nativity was not moved to that date because people had gotten so used to Christmas being on the 25th.
Ad astra and Merry Christmas! Sean
Btw, it’s fairly certain shepherds weren’t watching their flocks by night on the 25th. Galilee is perishing -cold- that time of year.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Of course! I agree, because we don't know the exact month and day on when our Lord was born. I think December 25 was chosen by the Catholic Church as the date for honoring the birth of Christ at least partly because it was nine months after the feast of the Annunciation, honoring the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to the BVM. It's also possible December 25 was chosen in order to Christianize a pagan Roman holiday.
Ad astra and Merry Christmas! Sean
It was the birthday of Mithras, among others.
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