<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces 

Trying to inspire my son to write better similes, I came across a repository of comically bad ones.
When bad writing becomes funny
-Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

-McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.

-The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.


I wasn't able to locate a good list of Wodehouse similes, such as "he sipped his coffee with the air of one who wished it were hemlock" or "aunt-to-aunt, like mastedons braying over primeval swamps". But Stephen Fry does a good job of explaining Wodehouse's genius.

4 Comments:

By Blogger Christopher Chambers, at Sun Apr 13, 02:46:00 PM:

"The punditocracy fell upon the story like stray dogs on a dropped pork chop."

--one of my students at Georgetown wrote this.

It's an amusing one. OK in that it symbolizes/encapsulates, invokes senses, leads to a nice illustration.  

By Blogger Christopher Chambers, at Sun Apr 13, 02:51:00 PM:

Here's a bonus:

"...the streets of forlorn neighborhoods are paved with Coca-Cola caps, and after rain, they glint in the dust like lost dimes."

Written by a long dead liberal, but I think even you might find "currency" in it for your son. ;-)  

By Blogger TigerHawk, at Sun Apr 13, 03:12:00 PM:

He'll be all over it like a fat kid on a cake.

More similes.  

By Anonymous Anonymous, at Mon Apr 14, 11:42:00 AM:

I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today - whatever that may be.

Reading Wodehouse has meant the same to me. He's the greatest cure for whatever ails you!  

Post a Comment


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?