Aces all round
Sometimes I find a reference to writing that resonates strongly. I go: yes, that’s how I think. That’s the way my mind works. For example the writer of the article likes the book s/he’s reviewing, gives an example from it, and gives an explanation why s/he thinks it’s good. I think the example is good, and think about my explanation of why it’s good. And lo and behold, we have the same explanation.
In this season of Wimbledon William Fiennes wrote in the Guardian last Saturday about John McPhee’s book Levels of the Game. One of the two main protagonists of the book is the African American tennis player Arthur Ashe, winner of the US Open in 1968, the Australian Open in 1970, and Wimbledon in 1975. Here Fiennes gives an example of how John McPhee writes:
‘But the simplicity of his sentences is deceptive. McPhee attends to what he calls “the aural part of writing” – the way it sounds, the tempo and cadence. Look at, or listen to, this beginning:
“Arthur Ashe, his feet apart, his knees slightly bent, lifts a tennis ball into the air. The toss is high and forward. If the ball were allowed to drop, it would, in Ashe’s words, ‘make a parabola and drop to the grass three feet in front of the baseline’. He has practised tossing a tennis ball just so thousands of times. But he is going to hit this one. His feet draw together. His body straightens and tilts forward far beyond the point of balance. He is falling. The force of gravity and a muscular momentum from legs to arm compound as he whips his racquet up and over the ball. He weighs a hundred and fifty-five pounds; he is six feet tall, and right-handed. His build is barely full enough not to be describable as frail, but his coordination is so extraordinary that the ball comes off his racquet at furious speed. With a step forward that stops his fall, he moves to follow.”
It’s not just the way the short sentences create a frame-by-frame slow-motion effect (writes Fiennes). It’s the way the word “lifts” in the first sentence lifts into the paragraph an f sound which then follows its own parabola like a thrown ball through feet, forward, falling, force, fifty-five, full, frail, furious, forward, fall and follow. Subject and medium step out on to the floor like dancers.
It makes sense. I’d buy that. There’s rhythm and more than rhythm. Straightforward word use that rises above its simplicity. Attention to how the words and sentences sound. But Fiennes has said all that needs to be said. No more. Basta. I agree with him.
