/lit/ - Literature

>>23337657
It's between this and The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

>>22861716
Martin Eden.

>>22837492
Good prose just is. You know it when you see it. Same thing with bad prose.
>... they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of youth, with
>naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to destroy. All the painful,
>thousand years’ gains of man in his upward climb through creation were lost. Only
>the electric light remained, a milestone on the path of the great human adventure.
>Martin and Cheese-Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place
>and the tree refuge. They sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, back into the
>dregs of the raw beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically, as atoms strive,
>as the star-dust of the heavens strives, colliding, recoiling, and colliding again and
>eternally again.
>“God! We are animals! Brute-beasts!” Martin muttered aloud, as he watched the
>progress of the fight. It was to him, with his splendid power of vision, like gazing
>into a kinetoscope. He was both onlooker and participant. His long months of
>culture and refinement shuddered at the sight; then the present was blotted out of
>his consciousness and the ghosts of the past possessed him, and he was Martin
>Eden, just returned from sea and fighting Cheese-Face on the Eighth Street Bridge.
>He suffered and toiled and sweated and bled, and exulted when his naked knuckles
>smashed home.
>They were twin whirlwinds of hatred, revolving about each other monstrously.
>The time passed, and the two hostile gangs became very quiet. They had never
>witnessed such intensity of ferocity, and they were awed by it. The two fighters
>were greater brutes than they. The first splendid velvet edge of youth and condition
>wore off, and they fought more cautiously and deliberately. There had been no
>advantage gained either way. “It’s anybody’s fight,” Martin heard some one saying.
>Then he followed up a feint, right and left, was fiercely countered, and felt his
>cheek laid open to the bone. No bare knuckle had done that. He heard mutters of
>amazement at the ghastly damage wrought, and was drenched with his own blood.
>But he gave no sign. He became immensely wary, for he was wise with knowledge
>of the low cunning and foul vileness of his kind. He watched and waited, until he
>feigned a wild rush, which he stopped midway, for he had seen the glint of metal.
>“Hold up yer hand!” he screamed. “Them’s brass knuckles, an’ you hit me with
’em!”
>Both gangs surged forward, growling and snarling. In a second there would be a
>free-for-all fight, and he would be robbed of his vengeance. He was beside himself.