Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature

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Nabokov’s writing is full- bloodedly ‘literary’ without being
cluttered or claustrophobic. The American author Carol Shields
can write an equally ‘literary’ prose, but in more subdued vein.
Take this passage from her novel The Republic of Love, whose
heroine Fay McLeod is a feminist scholar researching into
mermaids:

A few years ago a man called Morris Kroger gave Fay a small

Inuit carving, a mermaid figure, fattish and cheerful, lying on her

side propped up by her own thick muscled elbow. It is made of

highly polished gray soapstone, and its rather stunted tail curls

upward in an insolent flick...

In the matter of mermaid tails there is enormous variation.

Tails may start well above the waist, flow out of the hips, or

extend in a double set from the legs themselves. They’re silvery

with scales or dimpled with what looks like a watery form of

cellulite. A mermaid’s tail can be perfunctory or hugely long and

coiled, suggesting a dragon’s tail, or a serpent’s, or a ferociously

writhing penis. These tails are packed, muscular, impenetrable,

and give powerful thrust to the whole of the body. Mermaid

bodies are hard, rubbery, and indestructible, whereas human

bodies are as easily shattered as meringues.

This is superlative literary art, but it does not draw undue attention
to itself. It manages to be poetic and colloquial at the same time.
This is partly because the imagery is strikingly well wrought, while
the tone is fairly casual and downbeat. ‘They’re silvery with scales
or dimpled with what looks like a watery form of cellulite’ is full of
fine imaginative touches, not least the word ‘dimpled’ and the
inventive cellulite image. In a mischievous stroke, the idea that