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:
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“I am so tired of taking to others
translating my life for the deaf, the blind,
the “I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges
to live it” white women
the “I want to live my white life with Third World women’s style and keep my skin
class privileges” dykes”
—Lorraine Bethel, African American lesbian feminist poet. “What Chou Mean We, White Girl?” Lines 49-54 (1979)
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)