I believe I’ve written, even if only briefly, about four particular authors that have recently garnered my attention – Rushdie, Steinbeck, Michener, and Burroughs. They’ve gotten me thinking lately about distinct styles and how we can enjoy each one of them in their own time.
I’m a big fan of Salman Rushdie. I’ve made it clear that I love the language he uses. And yet, he exhausts me at times. With the beautiful language comes these seemingly mundane, and yet fantastical stories with so much more depth than the simple characters let on. It’s sometimes hard to keep track of it all, especially with the extra “magic” that is constantly peppered in the works I’ve read here and there.
But the language is, indeed, beautiful.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have Edgar Rice Burroughs – who wrote profusely about 100 years ago. I’ve talked about him and his “old-timey” language here before too. It’s no accident that a lot of Burroughs’s works came out in serial form in magazines with names like Pulp. He could just grind the adventures out, and people ate them up. The words were simple, but the stories were so engaging and adventurous that you could plow through them on a good afternoon and not have a care in the world.
That leads me to the other two authors. I’ve recently picked up Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, as well as Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, and, although I believe Steinbeck the better author (by a small amount), I find them interchangeable in many respects. I really discovered this when I left Michener in my office (I’ll read a bit when I eat lunch), but still had Steinbeck at home, so I wasn’t bothered by the oversight. Especially with these two books – both chopped into short chapters that generally follow a story line, but can be taken as stories on their own.
And this is where they both excel. They seem a perfect center ground between the first two – great language, but also great stories. Sure, there’s a place for the likes of Rushdie and Burroughs, but if I were stranded on the proverbial desert isle, I’d choose either Steinbeck or Michener any day over them to populate my library.
But I’d take Humphry Clinker over ‘em both.
On an island? I would also wish for The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell