Quotes I Like

[stevesh]

I read a lot of fiction and tend to separate novelists into two groups: storytellers and writers. Storytellers spin a great yarn that keeps you reading, but their prose can be ordinary. Writers may not get the story just right, but they can amaze you with the way they put ideas and words together. It's rare you see both types holding the same pen (Melville comes to mind). I'd call Stephen King a storyteller and James Lee Burke a writer. This is from Burke's novel Rain Gods:


"[his] father the history professor had always maintained the key to understanding our culture lay in the names of Shiloh and Antietam. It was only in their aftermath that we discovered how many of our own countrymen - who spoke the same language and practiced the same religion and lived on the same carpet-like, green, undulating, limestone-ridged farmland - we would willingly kill in support of causes that were not only indefensible but had little to do with our lives."

[West of the Rockies]

That IS some good stuff, SteveSh.  I gotta look this guy up in my local used book store. 

[b_dubb]

i've picked that up from you stevesh.  i believe you have an anecdote on the page about an escapade where you and your buddies were "drunk as lords".  i was thinking that was a Kerouac or maybe a Cormac McCarthy reference.  for the record ... McCarthy is my favorite writer.  my favorite novel of his is probably "Suttree" but "No Country For Old Men" was fucking magnificent as well.

[West of the Rockies]

I just picked up a battered copy of Big Sur by Kerouac.  I liked On the Road, but I guess BS was less well-received.