Thursday 22 July 2021

A Chill Wind

Previously with Dornford Yates and Stieg Larsson and now with Susan Howatch, appreciation of Poul Anderson has compelled me to notice similar literary details in the works of other authors. Thus:

"But my relief was gone, my depression was crawling back to possess me and..."

- wait for it:

"...a chill wind blew towards me as I turned to face the sea."
-Susan Howatch, Penmarric (London, 2014), IV, CHAPTER NINE, p. 496.
 
If not for the omnipresence of the wind as pathetic fallacy, analogy and (almost) dramatis persona in Anderson's works, I would have read past this passage without comment. However, we appreciate a novel more fully by pausing on apparently inconsequential words and phrases.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It makes me wonder if Howatch read some off Anderson's stories and took note of some of his literary methods! More likely, of course, she independently adopted use of pathetic fallacies.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

No... A chill wind blowing on a depressed narrator can happen anywhere in literature but PA has made me appreciate it.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

True. And I take more notice, sometimes, of pathetic fallacies because of you!

Ad astra! Sean