The Power of the Pen

I will be the first to admit that I am a sucker for good prose. I am in perennial awe of the way words can be put in a sequence to describe people, objects, and situation and evoke a lush mental picture with little or no effort on your part. Sometimes the author will say something so succinct that the point he or she is making will just jump right out at you. There are two instances that I came across (among the hundreds, there are a lot of very good writers out there). The first was the review of the Maserati Quattroporte by Ted West of the New York Times. Mr. West though writing in a very informal conversational style manages to portray the driving pleasure of a Maserati Quattroporte so well, that I feel like I've already driven one despite have not set foot in one myself. The Maserati article is here (pdf).

The other was a NYTimes Modern Love column where a dialog between two characters and how honesty can make such a deadly weapon:

Jerry nodded. “Some people use honesty like a weapon.”

“Like a switchblade,” I said. “Like a bayonet. They slice up your heart with all these ugly, hurtful words and then, while you’re bleeding on the floor, they hand you a Band-Aid: ‘I was only being honest.’ ”

“Honesty is overrated,” Jerry agreed.

The NYTImes article is here (subscription required).

Comments

[dan]

gran tourismo is an absolute work of art. I'm not going to click on the link as I'm way too lazy to dig up a nonreg friendly link.

The last part brings to mind two quotes;

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

it's probably why people tend not to be honest unless you give them a mask to hide behind.