![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
First, the edelweiss (aka Leontopodium alpinum), blooming weakly in the alpine meadows of South Philly (elev. 36 ft). I think it's remarkable that it blooms at all...
And now, the purple prose. This is from Farrer's second novel, The Sundered Streams, and is an example of why he's a lousy novelist but a fabulous prose stylist. First, the plot summary: Kingston, our protagonist, is married to a dull but dependable woman. He finds himself inexplicable drawn to her very odd cousin Isabel, who is living with them. Through a series of mischances Kingston and Isabel wind up stranded, alone, on a mountain top, where they discover their mutual conviction that their souls have been linked for all eternity. She demands that he run away with her; he refuses, citing the claims of duty and honor, and they are locked in a fierce emotional combat. Finally, they agree that nothing can be resolved that night; she retires to sleep in the primitive summit shelter and he remains outside to pace and fret.
And there the narrative stops dead.
For four full octavo pages, the crisis and fulcrum of the plot hangs in the balance -- while Farrer paints a word picture of the impending dawn atop the peak that I believe to be a stand-in for his native Ingleborough. But such a word picture. One can almost forget, midway through this, that two tortured souls are trying to find a way forward out of an impasse.
( The purple prose, let me show it you )
At this point, Isabel joins him. The crisis has passed, and they both acknowledge the claims of duty and honor and the dull but dependable wife.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pameladean, I tweeted some pages of execrable dialog from this book earlier. Interestingly, that is the voice Kingston uses when talking to his wife -- that stilted, superficial, early 20th century public school voice of the English gentry. When he speaks to Isabel, it's wholly other -- more genuine, more impassioned. I could wish he had had a stern editor to trim and prune a work that had a germ of an idea, badly handled by someone who's much better at describing landscapes and flowers than at plumbing the human heart.
And now, the purple prose. This is from Farrer's second novel, The Sundered Streams, and is an example of why he's a lousy novelist but a fabulous prose stylist. First, the plot summary: Kingston, our protagonist, is married to a dull but dependable woman. He finds himself inexplicable drawn to her very odd cousin Isabel, who is living with them. Through a series of mischances Kingston and Isabel wind up stranded, alone, on a mountain top, where they discover their mutual conviction that their souls have been linked for all eternity. She demands that he run away with her; he refuses, citing the claims of duty and honor, and they are locked in a fierce emotional combat. Finally, they agree that nothing can be resolved that night; she retires to sleep in the primitive summit shelter and he remains outside to pace and fret.
And there the narrative stops dead.
For four full octavo pages, the crisis and fulcrum of the plot hangs in the balance -- while Farrer paints a word picture of the impending dawn atop the peak that I believe to be a stand-in for his native Ingleborough. But such a word picture. One can almost forget, midway through this, that two tortured souls are trying to find a way forward out of an impasse.
( The purple prose, let me show it you )
At this point, Isabel joins him. The crisis has passed, and they both acknowledge the claims of duty and honor and the dull but dependable wife.
pameladean, I tweeted some pages of execrable dialog from this book earlier. Interestingly, that is the voice Kingston uses when talking to his wife -- that stilted, superficial, early 20th century public school voice of the English gentry. When he speaks to Isabel, it's wholly other -- more genuine, more impassioned. I could wish he had had a stern editor to trim and prune a work that had a germ of an idea, badly handled by someone who's much better at describing landscapes and flowers than at plumbing the human heart.
