Sunday, April 13, 2008
The sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces
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 
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 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 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 
, 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!
