Chabon could write about the most banal topic and make it sound like poetry. That was from a non-fiction work, and it referred to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's father, who died in an insane asylum.Originally Posted by N7YA
That is pretty good, i must admit.
Here's a excerpt from his (IMHO) greatly under-appreciated novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union:
"The Yiddish Policeman's Union," says the pie man's daughter, sitting down on the bench beside Landsman. She has taken off her apron and washed her hands. Above the elbows, her freckled arms are dusted with flour. There is flour in her blond eyebrows. She wears her hair tied back in a black elastic. She is a hauntingly plain woman with watery blues eyes, about Landsman's age. She gives off a smell of butter, tobacco, and a sour tang of dough that he finds weirdly erotic. She lights a menthol cigarette and sends a jet of smoke toward him. "That's a new one."
The first time I came upon that paragraph, I must have read and reread it five times in succession, just reveling in it's linguistic artistry. My wife doesn't like me to read his stuff in bed because I keep bothering her, reading passages out loud.
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--Unknown
...go figure.