writing with persuasion - just pondering...

I'm doing one of my frequent reads of "A Moveable Feast". In one of the beginning chapters, Hemingway talks about eating oysters. I don't even particularly like Oysters, but when I read it the way he describes it, I want to eat them, lots of them, and wash them down with white wine.

here's an excerpt:
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and make plans.

I don't even particularly like Oysters, but when I read it the way he describes it, I want to eat them, lots of them, and wash them down with white wine. How does he do that? I like how he never talks about what something is, but just the way it is to him. Especially food.
I want to write like that: where I can convince someone that doesn't necessarily like oysters to want to eat plates full of them.
The persuasion is so simple in his work, but I dig it. I've had a taste for oysters since last night when I read that passage. Salty sea taste, succulent texture, drinking the juice from the shell and white wine...mmmmmm.....and I don't like oysters much...but I think I do today!

Has a novel ever persuaded you to like something, or try something you wouldn't normally like because of the way the writer portrayed it in his book?

maybe it was just that after he ate them he was happy again and making plans, dpaterso....I don't know. but still....hours later...I want oysters! Not just any oysters...I want oysters washed down with dry white wine.

terri - dirt doesn't taste like "the sea" - and you didn't tell me about it from a Paris cafe' where in the 1920's where you had just finished writing and looking at a beautiful person who'd just come in from the rain. YOu didn't tell me how empty you felt after reading your last good paragraph and knowing you had a good story and that you ordered oysters and a half carafe of dry white wine to fill you up again...if you had, I may have wanted to eat dirt!

dpaterso said:

My God, the man uses "taste" three times in the same sentence, has he no command of language?

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Hem was a simple direct writer. He didn't find "another word" for taste when taste is what he meant. He didn't depend on language to carry his story. His story carried his language.

I like mostly red wines, the occasional dry white, and I love sea food. I guess he just caught me in a "mood" - you know darn well if it was the wine I would have already admitted it, U!

KTC said:

Who's zooming who, Trish? I'm reading that book right now too? And yes, I have tried things because authors have made them sound so appealing in their verse. It's great getting involved in the books you read, isn't it!

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we talked about this last week in HOL. You were really excited to go to the library and get it again, I had already gotten mine out to read again. I think we're on the same Hemingway schedule, Kevin.

I really love how he talks about the writing and his process throughout the story. Telling it truly, not describing it, but stating it as it truly is/was. Sort of like he did with the oysters. He doesn't have to tell me what the texture is, or even what the wine tasted like, he doesn't have to tell me how it smelled or looked, just what it felt like to him. Simple true form. He never flattered anyone, including himself as he wrote about them. No one is iconic to him, they are all exactly what they are, good and bad. I would strive to achieve that in writing as well.
And I think on either Friday or Saturday I'm going to Broadway Oyster Bar in Soulard for oysters and wine!

a quote from Hadley, from the book: "Yes, Tatie, you and Chink always talking about how to make things true, writing them and putting them rightly and not describe."

Hadley must have listened to hours of conversation like that. In that way I would have loved to be in her shoes.

And yes, Ray, it does show that truth and story can carry plain language much further than fancy language can carry a plain story.
He didn't win the Nobel Prize for Literature for nothing!

Shadow_Ferret said:

I've found that I become influenced by writer's descriptions of certain dietary habits.

I've discovered brandy, bourbon and scotch that way. The author's just made them sound so delicious.

And they are.

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one of my friends is writing a book, and has a villianous hit-man type character in it, that you sort of have to laugh at because he's ridiculous. one of the things he has his character do is order a drink that is disgusting. It's his regular drink. I believe it was scotch and tonic (maybe? now I can't remember.) or something bitter and horrible like that. Point being, a simple drink choice sort of makes you crinkle your face and therefore, not really like that guy. In order to be able to describe this bad concoction, he ordered one at a bar one time....the first clue that he was dead-on was the look the waitress gave him! I had a big chuckle out of that.