/lit/ - Literature

>Best descriptions of fictional or real people you have ever read?

Some examples:

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlow describing the loudly-dressed Moose Malloy, in Farewell, My Lovely (1940)

She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens. Raymond Chandler, Marlowe describing a “neat little blonde” working in an office, in The Lady in the Lake (1943)

He was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. George Eliot, in Adam Bede (1859)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is usually presented but the full passage in which it originally appeared is even more interesting. As Mr. and Mrs. Irwine discuss Mrs. Poyser, he says with admiration: “Her tongue is like a new-set razor. She’s quite original in her talk, too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country with proverbs. I told you the capital thing I heard her say about Craig—that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Now, that’s an Aesop’s fable in a sentence.”

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. Graham Greene, the main character, an unnamed “whiskey priest,” describing his daughter Brigida, in The Power and the Glory (1940)

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous, and likable. In three days, no one could stand him. Joseph Heller, the narrator describing a character known only as The Texan, in Catch-22 (1961).

I felt that there was no weight to her—neither physically nor emotionally nor intellectually. She was like a glass of champagne without the gaiety of bubbles. It wasn’t that the champagne had gone flat. It seemed, instead, as if the bubbles had just never been there. Susan Stamberg, on First Lady Nancy Reagan, in Talk (1993)

Hélène is a harmony of delightful imperfections, which is the most flattering thing I could say about anyone. Peter Ustinov, on his wife Hélène du Lau d’Allemans, in Dear Me (1977)

>>12878395
>There I've spared you embarrassing historical fiction.

Not him, but War and Peace is historical fiction and also the greatest novel of all time. Tolstoy saw some battle himself, but nothing comparable to the great confrontations of the Napoleonic invasions. The events he was describing happened 60 years before his time (the same thing as people writing about World War II today).

Also, there are so many books by soldiers and on the psychology of soldiers that any talented writer today can flesh out realistic fiction about a war without actually going to one. One example is that of Shakespeare, who wrote beautifully about wars and fighting but never been to one.

>>12618476

No other writer ever saw as many things and in such detail as him (only Shakespeare, who is no wonder that he hated, an egocentric like he was noticing that there he had one of his few rivals). He was capable of perceiving every little expression on the face, every thought; he captured every gesture and action of other living things and stored in his brain for when the time to write would come.

Furthermore, the work of many realistic writers look like blurry mirrors compared to the creations of Tolstoy. He seems to be the most sensitive, perceptive and true of all realistic writers. He seemed to be perpetually devoid of skin, always in raw-flesh (at least his mind was like that: both his five senses as his conscience – his brain was as sensible as the tender eyes and soft antennae of the snail) so that even a breath, a look, a frown, an intonation of speech, a facial wrinkle and so many other little things reach him with a disproportionately strong force.

He submerge himself in human life: in the cities and the country, the offices and the fields, the war-zone and the mossy woods with scent of rotten leaves; he visited the slums of the poor and the rich resorts of high-society, and all the time his unparalleled sensibility was capturing every small movement that happened around him.

Every molecule of existence was absorbed by the palate of his conscience. Seriously, this guy is on a league of his own as a novelist. To come up with even half the details he presents in a single work would be extremely hard; to do the same thing is simply beyond the capacity of most writers.