pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books and a Beat.

In Cascadia, you’ll recall that I was much impressed by a few snippets of writing by Emily Carr (subject of the novel The Forest Lover). Now I have here, on loan from Pops, the longer work from which those snippets were snipped.

Klee Wyck is delightful. See for example these lines.

They were in a long straggling row the entire length of the bay and pointed this way and that; but no matter how drunken their tilt, the Haida poles never lost their dignity. They looked sadder, perhaps, when they bowed forward and more stern when they tipped back. They were bleached to a pinkish silver colour and cracked by the sun, but nothing could make them mean or poor, because the Indians had put strong thought into them and had believed sincerely in what they were trying to express.

Kathryn Bridge’s introduction and two forewords (to two different previous editions) by Ira Dilworth all note Carr’s style: painterly, minimalist, precise; each word in its place. Bridge quotes Carr on her two rules for writing, similar to those she used in her painting: “get to the point as directly as you can; never use a big word if a little one will do.” I think she’s done beautifully.

Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: essays, history, nonfiction, race |