PROSE WITH A PUNCH.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 5 September 1925, Page 11

PROSE WITH A PUNCH.

QTUDENTS of magazine literature, noting the increasing flood of short stories from the American presses, must have observed that in the United States the genius of the writer tends to exhaust itself in the manufacture of metaphor. The work of the best-known American sliort-story writers fairly scintillates with original similes. When genius burns, the author hunts about for a simile, rubs it on his sleeve to see if it sparkles, tries it on the dog, then puts it in position. “Can you keep a secret?” asks a heroine of her lover.

“Maybe not in the luxury to which it has been accustomed, but I geuss I can, keep it off the streets.” An unfortunate hero explains how ill luck dogs his footsteps in the following sentence: — “I’ll bet if I was dying, of thirst and expressed a desire for a drink of

water, it ’d start raining dried herrings and salted peanuts.” Never in an American story will you find a banal description of a heroine’s appearance. No for-get-me-not blue .eyes for U.S.A. writers. One recent 'heroine had cornelian eyes, suggesting to one reader at least that she was suffering from ophthalmia. An American heroine’s hair never glints gold, though perhaps it is too often the colour of ripe corn. But usually it is more originally described. One heroine had Marcel waves, “those flat, shiny ripples of hair you want- to touch if unmarried, but which, once married, generally touch you first.”

Reluctance is neatly expressed in such a sentence as this: “They walked towards it with all the enthusiasm of a kid edging towards a spoonful of castor oil.” A poker player in the hands of sharpers says that he never came nearer winning a game than a fried herring ever came near being a pearl necklace,

A friend, finding another' deep in the blues, says he tried 1 to put a fresh coat of paint on his outlook. He felt lower than a mole’s front foot. Our writers cannot reach these heights. Americans have been at it for at least half a century, for a writer of fifty years ago describes a negro giving evidence in Court for or against a prisoner:

“I know nothing against him, massa, but if I was a chicken, I’d roost high when lie was hangin’ aroun’.” And when Grant was the Presidential candidate, Colonel Zell, speaking on his behalf, burst forth into this flower of speech:— ‘‘Build a worm fence round a winter supply of summer weather; cafch a thunderbolt in a bladder; break a hurricane to harness; hang out the ocean on a grape-vine to dry; but never, sir, never, for a moment delude yourself with (he idea that, von can beat Grant. ’ ’ The absence of an old tradition makes for real freedom of speech,

VIVID AMERICAN WRITING.