Prose notes that the creative-writing workshop (which she brilliantly satirized in her novel "Blue Angel") is a latecomer to literary culture, but that writers have always turned to their predecessors for inspiration: "They studied meter with Ovid, plot construction with Homer, comedy with Aristophanes".
The book deconstructs the pirate fable — but is still, at points, a ripping yarn itself — and, as Francine Prose notes in her introduction, it is an altogether more sophisticated and subtle version of "The Lord of the Flies," which was published twenty-five years later.
Each chapter of the book contains several letters, diary entries, normal prose or notes from the fridge from different periods in time.
As an expert witness, Leonard testified about Hummert's prose style, noting the rare use of what he calls "ironic repetition" in constructions such as "She tried to break it off, so I broke her neck".
He covered a multitude of subjects, probing each with an expansiveness that was firmly rooted in scholarship and common sense, and he expressed his views in a prose style noted for its clarity and precision.
Each chapter of the book contains several letters, diary entries, normal prose or notes from the fridge from different periods in history (or, for us mere 2016 readers, the future).
His scattered work comprises essays, short stories and prose poetry, noted for their cultural references, but made little impact on Romanian literature.
Testosterone needed only minor changes, while Anarchy underwent an entire rewrite, with Brassart restructuring the plot and streamlining over 500 pages of prose and notes into a fast-paced, 250 page novel.
"Like his pottery, de Waal's prose is restrained," noted Rosemary Hill in the Scotsman.
But in the spirit of his lapsed C.I.A. spook, Berenson doesn't fully trust his readers; he habitually litters his prose with research notes.
