It’s not that important.
And the winner of the 2007 MorCrack FerGarthy Award is …
Per Petterson! Out Stealing Horses. (A New York Times Best Book of 2007.)
Sample paragraph:
I too have a dog. Her name is Lyra. What breed she is it would not be easy to say. It’s not that important. We have been out already, with a torch, on the path we usually take, along the lake with its few millimetres of ice up against the bank where the dead rushes are yellow with autumn, and the snow fell silently, heavily out of the dark sky above, making Lyra sneeze with delight. Now she lies there close to the stove, asleep. It has stopped snowing. As the day wears on it will all melt. I can tell that from the thermometer. The red column is rising with the sun.
* Lyra. It’s always a good move to name a dog after a constellation.
* Is it hard (or, not easy) to say what breed the dog is, or just not important? I think you should choose one. Or, better yet, describe the dog. Of course, that would involve details. Let me ask this: Is it brown?
* A torch, of course. Handier than a flashlight! Or, in Norway, does torch refer to flashlight?
* Millimetres thick? Or is it a horizontal measurement? Not clear.
* … dead rushes … yellow with autumn. Redundant?
* Silently falling snow – the deadliest.
* Heavily falling snow – the 2nd deadliest.
* Sky, still above. Check.
* Lyra sneezes with delight. Or so we assume, since it is the universal dog gesture of delight at the sight of snow.
* What will melt? The snow? The dog? The stove? All three? We must assume the snow.
* I give up.
7 January, 2008 at 11:36 am
This bit reminds me of an exchange Julia and I had on the river last summer:
Me: “Oo, did you see the big fish jump?”
Julia: “No, what kind was it?”
Me: “I don’t know. It was silver.”
7 January, 2008 at 12:10 pm
As the day wore on, and the millimetres of ice turned to slush, the silver fish began to rise silently, similarly to the way the sun did.
9 January, 2008 at 10:18 am
[...] I too have a blog. Its name is Lyra. [...]
10 January, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Not being one to want to beat a dead horse, or dog, whether or not it is named or identified, I still find myself compelled to come back to this. I just returned from driving across town to retrieve my obnoxious mutant offspring from school, and was reflecting on the snow coming down. I was trying to think of how I would write it if I were compelled to, and realized that I don’t think there are any ways to describe snow coming down, or blanketing the ground, for that matter, that haven’t been done a million times already. It’s not like it comes in a wide array of different colors. It’s not like it falls in a multitude of styles. And it’s not like the sky has an abundance of display options from which to belch it forth — snow pretty much requires overcast, which is rarely something other than gray. White on gray isn’t that compelling (unless it was Nicole Kidman nude on, say, the back of an elephant). As a canvas for an overwrought literary type to blather all over, snow on its own just doesn’t seem that useful. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe that’s why I’m not literary.
10 January, 2008 at 2:53 pm
My grandpa used to tell stories about going fishing in November, and sometimes he would say it was snowing like a sonofabitch. When I was a kid, I thought that was a perfectly vivid description of a snow storm.
It’s kind of curious, isn’t it, that Petterson chooses to describe the snow, and gives us no description of the dog.
The mysteries of bestselling literature.
Thanks for commenting, Chris.
24 May, 2008 at 8:05 pm
[...] Even the Ponies Seem Tired of It There’s a lot hype (Stephen King loved it!; Richard Russo doubts we’ll see one finer!) about a forthcoming novel called The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Ecco, June), but to me it reads depressingly like a serious early contender for the 2008 MorCrack FerGarthy Award. [...]
13 January, 2010 at 7:12 pm
[...] winners include Per Petterson and Toni [...]