Style
The review of fictional books is a favorite device of Borges (see, for instance, his "pseudo-essay" The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim in Ficciones).
The fictional essayist's vanity, affectation, and hypocrisy "gives the story a satirical coloration" and, along with the reactions of the misunderstanding and unappreciative public, serve to, by contrast, emphasize Quain's "uncompromising purity."
Read more about this topic: An Examination Of The Work Of Herbert Quain
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can’t get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.”
—Anzia Yezierska (c. 1881–1970)
“There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)