On Speaking Easy

(By Guest Blogger & Avid Commenter: Stormy521.)

A great deal of language and speech and vocabulary draws on what we read. Writers like Melville, James (the original tool smith), and Dickens (having eleven kids to support, he knew A LOT of words) educated the reader by sheer girth. But you read them with your ears as well as your eyes, because language was so elaborate in those days. Thus, you learned about language. Still, I just reread What Maisie Knew (1897). Although the story (of her parents' divorce) is told from the point of view of a six year old, you would swear Maisie was forty the way James wrote her. It was an exhausting read. Hemingway, on the other hand, knew how to slice a page in half, his work was so lean. Not exactly exhausting, but his language was magical, too. And if you have never read F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest work...

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning -"

Can't you hear the music?

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