A friend of mine had told me about the discussion going on here. In
the past, I had found myself at the archive site but posts such as the
one excerpted below have left a film on my monitor screen.
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Brian Thornton
<bthorntonwriter@...> wrote:
> Wow! Grad school comes in handy when troweling out overwrought
metaphors
> such as those cited above!
>
> "Pure noir." "Bastard child."
>
Mr. Thornton, who is kind enough to let us know his profession in his
email handle, can talk the talk but I was wondering if he could walk
the walk. I found his short story here:
http://www.shredofevidence.com/category/author/brian-thornton/
"Hatchet-faced"? That has always been an interesting one. I've seen
hatchets and my share of faces but "hatchet-faced"? Does that mean a
thin, sharp, pointy face? Overwrought? He used the adjective first,
not I.
Mr. Thornton goes on to write: "Her stomach jumped again, so loud in
her ears that she was sure he could hear it."
Well, that line kind of reads itself.
> (Sorry, couldn't resist. It just seems that so many "literary
writers" seem
> to assume that the rest of us have never read a book without
pictures, and
> then the name dropping begins. Ugh.)
Name dropping? Check out Mr. Thornton's page at something called
Crimespace: http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BrianThornton
The way I figure it, the page is some type of promotional device. You
tell me. Mr. Thornton provides a slide show on his profile which
pictures him with his considerable arm wrapped around various authors.
Some of those in his clutches seem quite uncomfortable. But that may
just be me reading into it.
Sure is easy to criticize, ain't it?
Rich Shado
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Feb 2009 EST