ellenkushner (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ellenkushner) wrote2010-07-02 01:55 pm
ellenkushner) wrote2010-07-02 01:55 pm
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Bony and the White Savage
In preparation for our trip to Australia, I've been reading the "Bony" (Inspector Bonaparte) mid-century mystery novels by Arthur Upfield, lent me by Mr. Henry Wessells of Temporary Culture (& James Cummins Booksellers).
They include such memorable passages as:
"While one counted ten, the sky at zenith above the ridge to the graveyard of the sun was a soiled pink drape, becoming as the wrapping of a five-thousand-year-old-mummy before night came to obliterate the obscenity."
and
"'My old man! He could do anything with nothing but his sweat.'"
But I must admit my favorite bit is the Times Literary Supplement quote on the back cover flap, which begins:
"Arthur Upfield has an extraordinary gift. In many of the most elementary ways, he writes badly; and yet somehow in all his long series of books he conjures up, more vividly perhaps than any other popular writer, the feel of the Australian outback...."
Yep. Go, TLS - tell it like it is.
They include such memorable passages as:
"While one counted ten, the sky at zenith above the ridge to the graveyard of the sun was a soiled pink drape, becoming as the wrapping of a five-thousand-year-old-mummy before night came to obliterate the obscenity."
and
"'My old man! He could do anything with nothing but his sweat.'"
But I must admit my favorite bit is the Times Literary Supplement quote on the back cover flap, which begins:
"Arthur Upfield has an extraordinary gift. In many of the most elementary ways, he writes badly; and yet somehow in all his long series of books he conjures up, more vividly perhaps than any other popular writer, the feel of the Australian outback...."
Yep. Go, TLS - tell it like it is.