Models, thoughts

In no particular order, at the moment, to emulate when I write my own stuff, non-exclusive list:

Literary idols (English):

• Hilary Mantel — awareness / integration of past vs. present
• F. Scott Fitzgerald — evocative detail, willingness to be in pain, risk stereotype, irony
• Willa Cather — spare language, view of landscape
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — unflinching delivery
• Rachel Cusk — melancholy, philosophical detachment
• Edith Wharton — power of observation, sense of narrative inevitability, elegant language

Literary idols (not writing in English):

• Walter Kempowski — spare emotion
• Isabel Allende — narrative sweep

Others:

• Mozart (composer) — aching simplicity
• Moonlight (film) — pacing
• Ruby in Paradise (film) — not rushed
• Erik Satie (composer) — aimlessness
• Ravel (composer) — lush harmony
• Henk Helmantel (painter) — light
• Domenico Ghirlandaio (painter) — knowingness of the faces
• Velazquez (painter) — connection in the eyes

Examples:

• Wolf Hall
• The Great Gatsby
• Purple Hibiscus
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Outline
• Ethan Frome

Tempting, but be aware of:

• Thomas Mann — sentences out of control
• F. Scott Fitzgerald — didactic symbolism
• David Foster Wallace — observation out of control, wit for the sake of wit
• Jonathan Franzen — need to say something “important”, too much message
• Poulenc — too much need for conventional resolution
• Breughel — lost in the grotesque
• Karl Ove Knausgaard — ego out of control

Foods to emulate:

• Overripe tomatoes
• saltiest cottage cheese
• asparagus
• jasmine rice
• tom kha gai
• apple-lemon-ginger juice
• Wiener schnitzel
• Flanders red ale
• Meyer lemon
• capers
• baba ghanouj
• all the foods I haven’t eaten yet

~ by Servetus on March 7, 2017.