Style
Harrison is stylistically an Imagist and his early work relies heavily on the use of strange juxtapositions characteristic of absurdism. His work has been acclaimed by writers including Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman (who has called him "a Zen master of prose"), China Miéville, and Clive Barker, who has referred to him as "a blazing original". In a Locus magazine interview, Harrison describes his work as "a deliberate intention to illustrate human values by describing their absence."
Many of Harrison's novels include expansions or reworkings of previously published short stories. For instance, "The Ice Monkey" (title story of the collection) provides the seed for the novel Climbers, the novel The Course of the Heart is based on his short story "The Great God Pan". "Isobel Avens returns to Stepney in the Spring" is a short version of the story expanded as the novel Signs of Life; the short story "Anima", first published in Interzone magazine, also forms one of the central thematic threads of Signs of Life.
Read more about this topic: M. John Harrison
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“One who has given up any hope of winning a fight or has clearly lost it wants his style in fighting to be admired all the more.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only.”
—André Malraux (1901–1976)