Move Me, Tuesday – verbing
Remember when we did this? When I asked you (and me) to write using words that were “verbified”? Remember? Well – this is nothing new. Just look at this post over at kottke.org.
Now take a look at this excerpt:
“Demon of a crow out there before daylight, cawing and croaking, rummaging in the palm tree that is not a palm tree but for some reason misnamed so. Queer bird, all by herself, neither chick nor child, with her omening and her conundrumming.”
Oooh, that’s good and it is only the second paragraph of Edna O’Brien’s “The Light of Evening.” I like the book already. Have you read it? Did you like it? If you haven’t read it, will you now that I’ve teased you with verbified words?
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move me, writing, examples, Edna O’Brien, The Light of Evening
April 3rd, 2007 at 10:41 am
It personally would drive me nuts to read a whole novel written like that. You can take anything too far. It just smacks of trying to be “too cute” to me.
bobbi c.
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:05 am
Bobbi - I think you might feel differently about the novel if you read some of the reviews it garnered - and the novel itself. It wasn’t fair to the work for me to only provide the one paragraph as example.
Try this review, for sure: http://www.slate.com/id/2151257/
Also - I used that one paragraph simply because it fit with ‘verbifying’ nouns, which is something I found interesting. And prevalent.
Thanks for the comment, tho. And you are right - reading something that overuses one literary “trick” gets annoying.