Style
As with much of Self's fiction there is a heavy emphasis on certain elements of the prose.
In each of the stories the city it is set in is described in detail. For example the area of London in which The Plantation Club is set is described from the point of view of an idle wanderer. The intertwining alleys are described along with the masonry, architecture, and history of the buildings. This helps to establish not only the surroundings for the story but to also give a strong sense of scale: the regulars at the club, enclosed by the club, by the alley, by the suburb, by the city, etc. This idea of scale is also a recurring theme in Self's work, perhaps best encapsulated by the short story Scale in the earlier collection Grey Area.
Self also continues his love of words. His previous works have at times been overloaded with obscure and obsolete words and although less prevalent in this collection there are still some examples that may require some looking up. Self is also not afraid to use elements of foreign language in his prose, and this is most apparent in "Leberknödel." In that story not only are there lines in Latin from an Aria, and elements of the Swiss German spoken by the characters, but also the phonic sound of them (mis)speaking English. For example...
"The people who live there are not the best off type, but the city council - the canton, also - are thinking about taking the action. I think they will be made to move soon. (Moov zoon.)"
...illustrates both how Self conveys the characters' enunciation as well as their grammatical approach to English.
Read more about this topic: Liver: A Fictional Organ With A Surface Anatomy Of Four Lobes
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it exists! Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches! Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses. Invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)