Heh. The first thought that came to mind is likely annoying -- BUT, I would say it depends on the rest of the story :D.

The paragraph establishes a feeling of sadness and nostalgia in me, and captures a multi-faceted experience too from the history of a place to the feeling of wind on someone's face.

But it would depend on how this weaves its way into the rest of the story, I think. I would expect the writer to at least be consistent in style, but does said style contribute or take away from the basic elements of character and plot, and do these basic elements weave together to establish either a mood or theme which is supported by the style, or taken away by the style?


By itself I would say that the style is fine. But, admittedly, I also do not mind labored and awkward prose put to good effect. If it causes me to skip around in thoughts and that skipping about seems to add to the mood (perhaps putting me in a similar mood to what the protagonist is feeling?) then I think that superb. If not then I don't mind it, though I might wonder what all the fuss was about.

"The declivity where he sat to rest was part of a railroad bed blasted out of the hard shale and lime deposits cut by the Hudson River, which was just down the hill, out of sight, hidden by forestation, backyards, homes. (does he mean the railroad bed or does he mean the Hudson River is just down the hill???) The wind eased through the weeds, pressing on both sides of the track, (again, is it the weeds that press againt the track or the wind???) died, (both the wind and weeds can die and why the redundant comma after the died and before the and???) and then came up again hinting of seaweed (again, it could hint of either weeds ot wind... cryptic at best) - the sea miles away opening up into the great harbor of New York, the sea urged by the moon's gravity up the Hudson, that deep yielding estuary, and arriving as a hint of salt in the air, against his face, vised between his knees." (why is this section not a new sentence, as it is a new line of thought?)

Is this good writing? (you mean... "is this written well"?)

It nearly triggered my dyslexia after one sentence.

For me, it reads like a Flannery O'Connor wannabe who isn't quite clear about what creates ambiguities in grammar.

It reminds me of a statement I once read from a social services case report made by a lady applying for welfare.

"I'm 29, jobless, broke, homeless and I have 4 kids. How did that happen?"

My reply:

If she doesn't know how she had 4 kids, perhaps she could be best helped if someone was to tell her about the "birds and the bees".

Meow!

GREG

I agree it is laboured and awkward, but it is quite evocative too. It might be that I would get used to the style and it would seem less laboured and awkward the more I read. On the other hand I might not get used to it and I would stop reading. The punctuation is a bit like the 200m hurdles, you think you've jumped them all after 110m, but find, unaccountably, that you still, have more, to go. Maybe that's deliberate to create some kind of clever effect.

Is this good writing? — csalisbury

He's got us talking about it I guess.

Is this good writing? — csalisbury

No, it's not. But any given sample of text prefaced by the question "Is this good writing?" is doomed to unfriendly and close analysis, which isn't the way we read fiction. Usually we open the book, start reading, and 20 minutes later we are still reading or we have moved on to other offerings.

Some people think Means is a very good writer; "Assorted Fire Events won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and received tremendous critical praise." Such high praise doesn't mean the book is any good, of course. The circle jerk of book critics is in the business of book making and selling. They have a lot of skin in the game. They might be right, or not.

Flannery O'Connor — Mayor of Simpleton

After I read the Amazon blurb, I thought of a Flannery O'Connor quote: "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

I don't know if David Means deserves to be stifled or not. A lot of fiction from the last few decades reads like wind easing through weeds, pressing on both sides of the track, and coming up stinking of seaweed.

Life is short and word processing equipment can fill up a lot of pages. The worst of it bears the stamp of a trained writer applying theory; it's more than boring; some of it is downright repellant.

Is this good writing?

I was a bit suspicious of great harbor of New York/Hudson/that deep yielding estuary, which I thought was elegant variation at first, but I think it actually works fine. Generally I quite like the writing style, though it takes a second to get into its rhythm. I'm not sure about the wind-journey-ending-against-his-face-as-a-hint-of-salt-in-the-air thing. It looks like he worked on that for a long time, and although it's quite clever in the way it introduces a man possibly in despair, and evocative in the way it sets the scene, it's maybe a bit portentous for my taste.

EDIT: Also, is it just me or isn't it pretty much impossible to get your face viced between your knees unless you're a child?

I think I can improve...

Matches etc.

A miserable git sat in a railway cutting not far from the sea.

Poetic for some. Messy and awkward for me. I take a hatchet to it thusly:

"The slope where he rested was part of a railroad bed blasted out of the shale and lime cut by the Hudson just down the hill and out of sight, hidden by forests, backyards, homes - the old river a funnel for the wind that eased now through the weeds, pressing on both sides of the track, dying, and then rising again with a hint of seaweed, a taste of the distant sea that, urged by the moon's pull up the deep yielding estuary, salted his face vised between his knees."

The vised bit seems unsalvageable really but I can't think of a good alternative right now. If it were a hand you could at least say "lay prone between his knees" and the subject would be totally clear.

a taste of the distant sea that, urged by the moon's pull up the deep yielding estuary, salted his face vised between his knees — Baden

:D I don't think this is an improvement.

God knows. I lost it at the end I think. :D

By itself I would say that the style is fine. But, admittedly, I also do not mind labored and awkward prose put to good effect — Moliere

That's my feeling too, more or less. One of my favorites, Laszlo Krazsnahorkai, routinely writes sentences which stretch over ten pages.

It's the effect that I feel is lacking in this case. I'm actually partial to his style, or at least the idea of a style that he's going for (I've read my fair share of literary fiction and I think I've got a good sense of which writers Means is fond of.) What's evocative in this opening, in my opinion, is the idea of a railroad bed, blasted out of shale and limestone, which is near a city, though hidden from it. And salty air. You have these evocative elements, on the one hand, and an elegant rhythm, on the other, but they don't quite work together.

I'm fresh off a Conrad kick, so maybe I'm setting the bar too high, but with Conrad the imagery unfolds along with the sentence, so the imagination is carried - and shaped by - the elegant syntax. Here, with Means, everything feels strained, like his well-curated selection of evocative elements is being painstakingly organized in order to service the rhythm. @Mayor of Simpleton already pointed out some faulty points. There's nothing wrong with ambiguity, used well, but there are a lot of moments here when the uncertainty over which element is being described feels less intentional than clumsy.

Another thing @jamalrob First the sea 'opens up' into the harbor. This seems strange to me. How does the vastness of the sea 'open up' into a smaller, more enclosed space? It's counterintuitive, but could work, for all that, if he were to continue tracing the motion of the sea's opening. But that's exactly what he doesn't do! Instead, the sea is urged, into a 'deep yielding' estuary, up a river. This is a faintly sexualized narrowing. Your point about his face being vised between his knees - that's the problem in a nutshell. Everything feels like an elegant evocation of elegance and evocation. It only works if you don't try to imagine what's being described.

No, it's not. But any given sample of text prefaced by the question "Is this good writing?" is doomed to unfriendly and close analysis, which isn't the way we read fiction — BitterCrank

That's a fair point, but I've been feeling unfriendly and analytical lately, and Means seems as good a person as any to take it out on.

Going purely off that one excerpt, it sounds like he's trying to imitate a certain literary style; long, rich, winding sentences. But in this excerpt it fails. It doesn't say anything that couldn't be said simpler, nor does it sound exceptionally poetic or 'literative'. What is said between each comma needs to add it's weight in worth to the sentence as a whole, otherwise it sounds needlessly complex, just for the sake of it. In my opinion, when using this style it's best to use it to express ideas that are inherently complex or descriptions that are beautifully portrayed. No need to use difficult sentences to say simple things. Some say you should state hard ideas simply, but I take the view that there is nothing wrong with saying them in a style that matches. Take these examples from Walter Pater in Marius the Epicurean, a sheer master of this same style:

"And while he learned that the object, or the experience, as it will be in memory, is really the chief thing to care for from first to last, in the conduct of our lives; all that was feeding also the idealism constitutional with him - his innate and habitual longing for a world altogether fairer than he saw."

"Conceded that what is secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in our experience but a series of fleeting impressions— so he continued the sceptical argument he had condensed, as the matter to hold by, from his various philosophical reading— given, that we are never to get beyond the walls of this closely shut cell of our own subjective personality; if the ideas we are somehow impelled to form of an outer world, and even of other minds akin to our own, are, it may be, but a day-dream, and the thought of a world beyond, a day-dream probably thinner still: then, he, at least, in whom those fleeting impressions—faces, voices, material sunshine— were very real and imperious, might well set himself to the consideration, how such actual moments as they passed might be made to yield him their utmost, by the most dexterous training of his capacities."

The sentences are broken up a great deal, but each part feels indispensable to the rest, subtly changing its meaning for the better. And there's nothing basic about either or them. Removing a line or even a word or two could ruin the whole thing. Paters style is extraordinarily consistent throughout the novel, but since we only have one example of Means', we can't judge his style too much either way not knowing if this is his best or worst attempt.

FWIW here's what happens next: dude takes off his shoes ("He extended his legs and began to take his shoes off, edging the heel with the back of the other shoe") steps on a broken bottle ("as jagged as the French Alps, the round base of the bottle forming a perfect support for the protrusion, the only piece of glass for yards, seated neatly against the rail plate") thinks about his dead wife ("her car simmering steam and smoke upside down in the Saw Mill River Parkway, twisted wreckage betrayed by the battered guardrail) and then gets beat up by a bunch of poor people while he imagines the performance of Brahm's Symphony no. 3 he could be at ("the third movement of which he was particular fond, Poco Allegretto, so rounded and soft at the beginning it would, if he had gone, remind him of the shoulders of his wife, of a moment twenty years ago making love in a small room on Nantucket")

First the sea 'opens up' into the harbor. — csalisbury

Wow, I hadn't even noticed that. Not reading closely enough. Surely it couldn't just be a mistake could it? Or just a wee trick to emphasize how big the harbour is? And after that comes the narrowing. But yeah, your wider point--"elegant evocation of elegance and evocation"--looks right.

Reviewers, and MOS, think Means is similar to Flannery O'Connor. Here's the opening lines of A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND:

THE GRANDMOTHER didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."

O'Connor's prose always flows with vernacular and conversational ease; Means' prose is studied (at least in the samples provided). I can't say how Means manages his stories (having read none). O'Connor ties beginnings, middles, and ends tightly together. Her interfering desire to visit her "connections" will lead to her and her family's demise at the hands of the Misfit. (Of the now dead grandmother, the psychopathic Misfit perceptively concludes the story, "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

I'd have to read Means as carefully (and I hope, with as much pleasure) as I have read O'Connor to make a comparison. I know how O'Connor populates her stories, provides compelling and convincing dialogue, and lands a KO at the end.

How is Means' dialogue? Does one end up caring about the fate of his characters? Are his plots convincing? Do his stories endure in one's memory?

The vocabulary construction Means deploys in his opening is... a bit heavy.
declivity
hard shale and lime deposits (wouldn't "shale and limestone" suffice?)
forestation
eased
sea miles away
moon's gravity
deep yielding estuary
vised

There is entirely too much traffic in altered parts of speech; "vise" is not a verb. Is there something wrong with "pressed", "squeezed", "caught", "trapped", "locked" or whatever it was that was happening between his knees?

I can imagine a lover yielding deeply, but not deep yielding. I prefer my estuaries to just slosh back and forth, to suck up the sea, or throw out or ooze, whatever is possible.. "Deep-yielding" is a nice construction, but it is wasted on estuaries.

Declivity? When was the last time (apart from this discussion) you spoke, writ, or read this word?

That's the spirit!

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've never read O'Connor, not a single story. I've been meaning to get around to it for the past decade or so, but, for whatever reason, never quite manage to. The sample you've provided does flow very nicely.

I can't say too much about how Means typically operates - All I've read is the opening story in Assorted Fire Events and a memoir/essay in Harper's about his father. I actually really liked the essay, which is what led me to check out his short stories.

But, based on the one story:

Beginnings, Middles & Ends - There's a kind of willful fucking with the very idea of such things. The protagonist, throughout, tries to understand why he's come out to the railroad, but he never really comes to anything. Maybe it's his wife's death. Maybe it's this problem at work. The story beings in media res and intentionally frustrates any attempt, on the readers' part, to retroactively establish any beginning. There's a false ending, before the final ending, and either ending can be read as the true one. I get the sense that Means is trying to express something like: To be alive is to be in the middle, having lost the plot. And I get the sense that he's suspicious of tight endings for similar reasons (too tidy, too much false closure) That's fine, I'm ok with that, but that only works if the middle's exceptionally pretty or if you care about the characters. So:

Characters worth Caring About: I don't know. I didn't much care about the protagonist. Maybe its just because, as a poor twenty-something, I find it hard to sympathize with a middle-aged man for whom Brahms evokes love-making in Nantucket. But I don't think it's just that. I've sympathized with plenty of rich characters in literature. The protagonist in this story just doesn't seem to be in any way unique or real. A lot of his inner monologue reads like a parody of dialogue in a Rohmer film. The poor thugs who beat him up aren't any more interesting. Means goes on about their growing up in a trailer park, with their impoverished dads putting out cigarettes on their arms. It just reads like a sheltered dude trying to look into the impoverished heart of darkness and feels false.

Dialogue - Can't speak to this. There's essentially no dialogue in the story.

Endurance in Memory Well, I'll give this to him. Something sticks. There's a violence and pain he's trying to convey, but doesn't quite seem to be able to - yet glimpses of that pain emerge every now and then.

There is entirely too much traffic in altered parts of speech; "vise" is not a verb. Is there something wrong with "pressed", "squeezed", "caught", "trapped", "locked" or whatever it was that was happening between his knees?

Yes, he alters and word-drops a lot. And, again, I'm fine with that if, as Moliere says, it's done to good effect. I get the sense that a lot of this altering and word-dropping is merely a way for him to signal literariness. Like, 'declivity' is a very pretty word, imo, but nothing's done with its prettiness. It's just dropped their awkwardly, for no reason I can decipher. Why not just say 'slope'? (Though, I suppose 'declivity' has a kind of geological vibe to it. That would tie it in to the shale and limestone deposits. It suggests, perhaps, an impersonal landscape. Cormac McCarthy uses this kind of trick a lot, but it seems to work better when he does it. Not sure why. I'd have to think about it.)

(P.S. Even having not read O'Connor, I know enough about literary criticism to know that comparisons to her tend to be lazy throwaways,usually meaning nothing more than: 'this writer writes morbidly about fate and human motivation.' I don't think that's what MOS meant, but take a drink every time a reviewer in a major literary organ mentions O'Connor. It hardly means anything anymore.)

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've never read O'Connor — csalisbury

There's no shame in having not read her in the past, but there is in not reading her in the future. Help is at hand! Free!

Everything That Rises Must Converge

and

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and other stories...

I think some of the diction is bad -- declivity, estuary -- and I also don't like all the relative clauses and piling on passive constructions.

The paragraph establishes a feeling of sadness and nostalgia in me, and captures a multi-faceted experience too from the history of a place to the feeling of wind on someone's face. — Moliere

I think maybe the worst that can be said of it is that for me it conjures up the author trying to write it.

If I were to distill it to what I think its essence is, I would probably try something like:

He smelled seaweed and saw no water.

FWIW here's what happens next: dude takes off his shoes ("He extended his legs and began to take his shoes off, edging the heel with the back of the other shoe") steps on a broken bottle ("as jagged as the French Alps, the round base of the bottle forming a perfect support for the protrusion, the only piece of glass for yards, seated neatly against the rail plate") thinks about his dead wife ("her car simmering steam and smoke upside down in the Saw Mill River Parkway, twisted wreckage betrayed by the battered guardrail) and then gets beat up by a bunch of poor people while he imagines the performance of Brahm's Symphony no. 3 he could be at ("the third movement of which he was particular fond, Poco Allegretto, so rounded and soft at the beginning it would, if he had gone, remind him of the shoulders of his wife, of a moment twenty years ago making love in a small room on Nantucket") — csalisbury

This physically hurts...

Why not just say 'slope'? (Though, I suppose 'declivity' has a kind of geological vibe to it. That would tie it in to the shale and limestone deposits. It suggests, perhaps, an impersonal landscape. Cormac McCarthy uses this kind of trick a lot, but it seems to work better when he does it. Not sure why. I'd have to think about it.) — csalisbury

I think 'slope' is definitely more beautiful phonetically -- one syllable, a long vowel, no flaps or schwas. But maybe, yeah, the point is to pick something that sounds more impersonal. 'Slope' has a wealth of poetic connotations. Generally I think Germanic words are aesthetically more pleasing than Latinate, especially artificial Latinate, ones in English.

I don't think there is much ambiguity at all. All those words are really just saying: "and then was thing" in a manner which does little more than the simplest language would. The "ambiguity" is in difficulty reading unusual words and convoluted structure. Mystery and excitement are missing.

With long, messy and ambiguous writing, I expect to be taking on a dance through ideas and feelings. The strength of such writing is it can bring together details in a way concise writing can not. Means' writing doesn't take that advantage here.

The voice feels really strange to me. Some of it sounds like it wants to explore an active aesthetic experience (e.g. "The wind eased through the weeds, pressing on both sides of the track, died, and then came up again hinting of seaweed " ), but it's surrounded by a passive chronicling of past events.

I think the absent topic is the worst part. What is the paragraph meant to be about? The railroad? The Hudson River? New York? Our contortionist hero, being drowned by the wind delivered spray of the moon powered sea? Means jumps all over the place, switching to one topic then back again, never seeming like they've finishing saying anything about one thing or another. Not ambiguity, but difficulty saying anything about the things listed. It all feels rather empty as a result. Good messy writing does the opposite, gets ambiguity from firing of many clear ideas, to a point where you aren't so sure how all those meanings fit together immediately.

Reviewers, and MOS, think Means is similar to Flannery O'Connor. — Bitter Crank

What part of "Flannery O'Connor wannabe" are you pissed off about? It wasn't mean as a complement for this Means guy.

Gee whiz! I'm not stating that he's anywhere near the level of Flannery.

All I had to go by was one short section of this guys work. I really didn't care to look into Means too much more as it seemed not worth the effort. It read to me like a "I wish I was like Flannery" construct. Sorry to put a bee in your bonnet there BC.

Personally what I read was for my taste crap, but others might find that crap somehow fertile.

Meow!

GREG

Oh, it wasn't just you -- a Google search showed that some "critics" thought they were similar. Personally, I don't know why anybody would think they were alike, as far as the short sample was concerned. Besides, it's summer time and bees are nesting everywhere, trees, houses, bonnets, etc.

This physically hurts... — TGW

The love-making in Nantucket thing kills me. & this sentence in particular:

"He extended his legs and began to take his shoes off, edging the heel with the back of the other shoe"

I think 'slope' is definitely more beautiful phonetically -- one syllable, a long vowel, no flaps or schwas.

I think they're both nice, in their own ways. I'd say 'Slope' is more deep-yielding.

Sounds pretentious and long-winded to me.

Starting a story whose second word is uncommon, and has a range of more familiar synonyms is bad strategy and possibly an attempt the demonstrate the writer is more than a writer but a literarian. "Me attempt literature, moi?"
Clumsy. clunky, and with dysrhthmic. I wonder if this is truly representative? But I certainly agree that were this passage's timbre to persist through the rest of the story it would make hard reading indeed.
It's actually confused too.
How can a declivity be a railroad bed blasted, and at the same time cut by a river? A river that was "out of sight" - its just bullshit.

The concavity where he squatted for the release of ordure, physically and spiritually was part of someone's driveway, carved out of the earth, and molded just so by daily use was quite conspicuously situated, hidden only by the morning hours. The wind eased through the weeds, pressing on both sides of the track, died, and then came up again hinting of burritos -- the burrito shop, miles away now, will open up in this great desert Las Vegas in a couple hours. The burrito, urged by the Earth's gravity up the Hudson, that deep unyielding orifice, and arriving as a hint of garlic in the air, against his face... queef, queef, queef.

Pulitzer please.