You can assume that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resuscitate a zombie army of dead white males.
Francine ProseWhatโs strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature.
Francine ProseWe never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way.
Francine ProseToo often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics classโor worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.
Francine ProseWith this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.
Francine Prose