Images of life and death

Thanks to Ken Ledford for sending this gorgeous opening passage from The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy:

"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun."

We start with a macro view that sets the time, place, weather, and mood. Then Roy's camera zooms in on specific images: crows gorging, "dustgreen" trees, overripe fruit, flies drunk on the abundant life--and then, abruptly, dead. I love the assonance of "dissolute bluebottles" "fatly baffled" and the echo of "stun" and "sun." And I like the way Roy varies her sentence length--some are snapshots, some movie scenes. 

I listened to the audio version of this book when it came out, and I had trouble following it. The more poetic a writer's style is, the more I need to see it with my eyes. 

Sunset, Moonrise

Anyone who has read Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, or even just seen the movie, will remember the scene where Lila Wingo first shows her children the simultaneous sunset and moonrise over the marshes. Conroy is sometimes guilty of overwriting, but here I think his language is as breathtaking as the natural beauty he captures.

"The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendent, the depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks. The moon then rose quickly, rose like a bird from the water, from the trees, from the islands, and climbed straight up—gold, then yellow, then pale yellow, pale silver, silver-bright, then something miraculous, immaculate, and beyond silver, a color native only to southern nights."

The first sentence balances parallel phrases in imitation of the sun and moon, then moves through layers of description that mirror the sun's descent. In the second sentence, the cadence of "from" phrases and gradations of color lift us up with the moonrise. Every time I read this I feel I have witnessed two miracles: one of nature, the other of art.