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:
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“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)