Can't wait to read it!
On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 7:05 AM, MC Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I recently ordered and just received John Gardner's *Grendel* and am rereading it for the first time since 1971. I thought I'd post a tidbit of it to give a sense of Grendel's voice. It would be fun if others read it now too (Alison is going to), so we could talk about it on Petc.
>
> Heres a sample paragraph:
>
> The sun spins mindlessly overhead, the shadows lengthen and shorten as if by plan. Small birds, with a high-pitched yelp, lay eggs. The tender grasses peek up, innocent yellow, through the gound: the children of the dead. (It was just here, this shocking green, that once when the moon was tombed in clouds, I tore off sly old Athelgards head. Here, where the startling tiny jaws of crocuses snap at the late-winter sun like the heads of baby watersnakes, here I killed the old woman with the irongray hair. She tasted of urine and spleen, which made me spit. Sweet mulch for yellow blooms. Such are the tiresome memories of a shadow-shooter, earth-rim-roamer, walker of the world's weird wall.) Waah! I cry, with another quick, nasty face at the sky, mournfully observing the way it is, bitterly remembering the way it was, and idiotically casting tomorrows nets. Aargh! Yaaw! I reel, smash trees. Disfigured son of lunatics. The big-boled oaks gaze down at me
> yellow with morning, beneath complexity. No offense, I say, with a terrible, sycophantish smile, and tip an imaginary hat.
>
> It was not always like this, of course. On occasion its been worse.
>
> Enjoy,
> Candice
>
> (*Grendel*, p. 7)
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--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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