This week's lesson was good. I'm a big fan of interesting word choice smooshed together with interesting compositional idea. Throw in a lively, creative anecdote or two and perhaps one can raise an interesting image. The byproduct of all these elements put together is style. I love style when it's genuine. It's a glimpse into the psyche of the penman. Peeling back the curtains into the paradigm of how a person functions through what they write on paper can be fascinating. It's awesome to think that that one person's style belongs to them, and them alone. It was fashioned from their life experiences and subsequent feeling toward existence, which belongs solely to them and no one else.
Here's a piece written by an American author and poet named Charles Bukowski:
"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”
Okay, so I think it's worth mentioning that Bukowski was a life long downtrodden, depressed hopeless drunk. However, he was most definitely not without eloquence, clever humor and a gift for deep anecdotal imagery. His word choice and rhythm were also top notch. His style was settled into a deep groove and he knew it. Now, I'm not a drunk, I don't even really drink often. I'm also not downtrodden or depressed. But I love reading his work because it's as if he was able to infuse it in a way that makes you know that he was a real being. His style makes his readers internalize how he genuinely felt about life as only he experienced it.
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