Clear glass, stained glass

"Good prose is like a window pane," George Orwell once wrote. That is, it should frame the view from that window without obstructing that view. You see the world through the window, not the window itself.

David McCullough

That analogy seems more apt for some kinds of writing than for others. When we are reading history or biography, for example, or a front-page newspaper story, we are more interested in the information being presented than in the way it is being presented. That's why a writer like David McCullough is so popular. Whether he is writing about John Adams or the history of the Panama Canal, his prose is crystal clear, allowing even readers of no special intelligence to understand what is going on and stay interested. The reader is able to see the picture McCullough frames without being distracted by flowery or obtuse prose. His style is effective because, until we stop to think about it, it is invisible.

Many writers of fiction are also like this, tellers of vivid stories that seem to flow effortlessly and naturally along, as if the writers themselves had almost nothing to do with it. I am currently in midst of Helen Simonson's The Summer Before the War, and Simonson strikes me as this kind of writer.  She plays no tricks with time, like so many modern writers, but tells her story in chronological order. She never tries to be obscure or flashy. She may win no literary prizes, but readers love her stories and, whether they realize it or not, appreciate her window-pane prose.

P.G. Wodehouse

Yet sometimes we want stained glass, not clear glass, in our windows. Sometimes we appreciate the glory of the author's language as much as, or more than, the author's story. A case in point has to be P.G. Wodehouse. He wrote dozens of novels, and the plots, while interesting, are often pretty much alike. Usually young love stands in jeopardy in some way. An older person, normally an aunt or a gruff father, stands in the way. Some wise person, such as Jeeves in the Bertie Wooster novels or Uncle Fred or Galahad in the Blandings novels, concocts a convoluted plan to save the day, but not before there are numerous hilarious complications. Yet we read Wodehouse novels just to delight in how he tells these stories.

I recently finished Galahad at Blandings, published in 1965. Among the stained-glass gems in this novel are these:

"Lady Hermione did not strike her brother with a bludgeon, but this was simply because she had no bludgeon."

"He was standing in the middle of the room with something of the air of a public monument waiting to be unveiled ..."

That's the kind of prose one notices and wants to read a second or third time to savor. Other novels I've read recently have also had lines good enough to make a reader stop.

The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson: "We pass through a den that died and got embalmed way back in 1967, down a dingy hallway, past a pink-tiled bathroom."

The Writing Class by Jincy Willett: "Only in art were there cliches, never in nature. There were no ordinary human beings. Everybody was born with a surprise inside."

Headlong by Michael Frayn: "Then the door's open, and we're in the middle of a genial battle to squeeze past a lunging tangled slavering amiable mass of dog."

Most of the time we prefer our reading matter, like our homes, to come with clear windows, but sometimes, as of a Sunday, we enjoy a little stained glass.