H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e1 9 6In the overcoat buttoned awry over the bathrobe he looked huge
and shapeless like a dishevelled bear as he stared at Quentin (the
Southerner, whose blood ran quick to cool, more supple to
compensate for violent changes in temperature perhaps, perhaps
merely nearer the surface) who sat hunched in his chair, his
hands thrust into his pockets as if he were trying to hug himself
warm between his arms, looking somehow fragile and even wan
in the lamplight, the rosy glow which now had nothing of
warmth, coziness, in it, while both their breathing vaporized
faintly in the cold room where there was now not two of them
but four, the two who breathed not individuals now yet some-
thing both more and less than twins, the heart and blood of
youth. Shreve was nineteen, a few months younger than Quentin.
He looked exactly nineteen; he was one of those people whose
correct age you never know because they look exactly that and so
you tell yourself that he or she cannot possibly be that because
he or she looks too exactly that not to take advantage of the
appearance: so you never believe implicitly that he or she is
either that age which they claim or that which in sheer despera-
tion they agree to or which someone else reports them to be.This kind of prose, much favoured by some American creative
writing courses, has an air of spontaneity about it which is almost
entirely fabricated. Despite its casual way with order and conven-
tion, it is as artificial as a Petrarchan sonnet. There is something
fussy and affected about the way it strives to sound natural. Its air
of artlessness is too self- regarding. What is really a kind of clumsi-
ness (‘where there was now not two of them’) is passed off as
having the rough edge of real experience. An attempt at impressive
intricacy in the final lines comes through as pedantic cleverness.