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Francine Prose

Francine Prose Books

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Goldengrove

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Mister Monkey

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“Reader, I married him. It turned out the sounds I heard coming from the attic weren't the screams of Mr Rochester's mad wife Bertha. It wasn't the wife who burned to death in the fire that destroyed Thornfield Hall and blinded my future husband when he tried to save her. After we'd first got engaged, he'd had to admit that he was already married, and we'd broken off our engagement. He'd asked me to run away with him anyway. Naturally, I'd refused. But later, after we were properly married, he insisted that it hadn't happened that way. It turned out there had been no wife. It turned out that it had been a parrot, screaming in the attic. The parrot had belonged to his wife. She had got it in the islands, where she had also contracted the tropical fever that killed her. She'd died long before I came to work for him as a governess. That was never Bertha, in the attic.”

Jane EyreMr RochesterParrot
Book:The Mirror: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him
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“You can assume that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resuscitate a zombie army of dead white males.”

IfsReasonWhiteCenturyArmyAssumingMalesReason WhyExplanationConspiracySurvivedZombie
Book:Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
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“With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.”

WarNightMiddlePossibilityParticularColdShotsArmyHotSentencesManageLandscapeMidstTrappedRiceSubordinatesClausesSoakingLavenderHot DaysCold NightMonsoonsRecitationPaddy
Author:Francine Prose
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“But beneath it all will run that Sicilian understanding that the underside of joy is grief, that the face of sacrifice and suffering is the dark mirror image of pleasure and enjoyment, that every moment of arrival is to be treasured and enjoyed in the full knowledge that it has brought us a moment closer to the moment of departure.”

MomentsRunningFacesJoySufferingUnderstandingDarkPleasureGriefSacrificeMirrorsEnjoyedEnjoymentDepartureArrivalsTreasuredSicilianMirror Image
Book:Sicilian Odyssey
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“But if I were asked to pick one constant, one quality that seems dependable, immutable, endlessly available, I'd say that it was intensity. For nothing in Sicily seems withheld, done half way, restrained or suppressed. There's nothing to correspond to say, the ironic, the cerebral remove at which a Frenchman might consider an idea or a question, or the Scandinavian distrust of the sloppy, emotive response.”

IfsWayIdeasDoneSeemsMightHalfQualityPicksConstantResponseAvailableRemoveIntensityIronicDistrustSloppyCerebralDependableFrenchmenHalf WayScandinavians
Author:Francine Prose
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“To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies. The only remedy to this I have found is to read a writer whose work is entirely different from another, though not necessarily more like your own—a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.”

ArtDifferentReasonLightFoundHouseDifferencesRoomsGeniusTrackChosenInnocentTruthfulRemedyInadequacyBeing TruthfulHarbingerPersonal Failure
Author:Francine Prose
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“Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only dimly familiar can inspire a confrontation with the mystery of time.”

KnowsChildrenSeemsSeeingMysteryInspirePhotographFamiliarConfrontationHandwriting
Book:Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
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“With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.”

WayMayImportantFactsUseSeemsMightReadingLiteratureLanguageRealizingLosesMaterialsEssentialsSightDown AndImportant ThingsNotesPaintObviousSpeedMediumsPainterTemptationComposerSurprisingSlow DownRaw Materials
Author:Francine Prose
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“Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.”

WritingChoicesInterestResultsDependsSkillsElementsPagesFinalsBlankOne WordGood WritingDeliberationBlank PagesChoosing One
Book:Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
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“So perhaps the correct conclusion is that Green was less attuned to how people sound when they speak - the actual words and expressions they employ - than to what they mean. This notion of dialogue as a pure expression of character that...transcends the specifics of time and place may be partly why the conversations in the works of writers such as Austen and Bronte often sound fresh and astonishingly contemporary.”

PeopleMayMeanCharacterSpeakSoundExpressionPureConversationGreenNotionContemporaryDialogueConclusionAustenSpecificsBronte
Author:Francine Prose
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