Down the Rabbit Hole

My Master Class

30 Day Blogging Challenge
PROMPT January 14th
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” -Ernest Hemingway
What are your thoughts on this quote by a writer many consider a master? Who are some other writers you admire or consider masters?

I love prompts like this because I get to talk about those authors I consider masters of their crafts and it feels a lot like paying them homage in exchange for having given me such inspiration. So the opinions expressed here are solely mine...

I love the classical writers first and foremost. They crafted stories that lived beyond their time and place. C.S. Lewis is unmatched in his imaginative storytelling. Anis Nin and DH Lawrence are the keystones of their genres, both of them are pioneers for all those romance and erotica writers who have found success since their works were published, banned and republished. My favorite among these classical master is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His words are beautiful and full of such color and life. The first time I read his "Love in a Time of Cholera", I was completely awed at his amazing prose:

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Aside from those classical writers, I have long list of active and prolific writers I consider to be masters at their crafts. For the sake of not writing a novel here, I'll just gush about a few....

James Lee Burke had the ability to transport his readers to locations and places where your senses seem to delight with the sounds and smells all around you. His characters are quirky and memorable, easy to invest in and care about from the very beginning. They are compelling enough to keep you coming back, novel after novel. This is a writer at the very top of his game. The very first line of the very first novel I read, Tin Roof Blowdown, took my breath away with the visceral melody of his prose:

"My worst dreams have always contained images of brown water and fields of elephant grass and the downdraft of helicopter blades. The dreams are in color but they contain no sound, not of drowned voices in the river or the explosions under the hooches in the village we burned or the thropping of the Jolly Green and the gunships coming low and flat across the canopy, like insects pasted against a molten sun." Tin Roof Blow Down

Mo Hader is another of my favorites. She has a very sharp and unforgiving style. Her stories stay with you, beyond the last strains of the final chapter. She has a great hook...and then delivers a full fleshed out, uniquely original story. "The Devil of Nanking" was one of the first novels I've read from this British crime author and it has never left me completely. It is not for the faint of heart but there is simply amazing writing throughout, stunning in all its horror and its grief.

Lastly, I love Gillian Flynn's twisted talent. She is a master of creating those characters we hate to love. Her beautiful prose always belays the darkness of our natures. She lurks you in and keeps you hooked until that final gut punch at the end. She's just amazing and dark and gorgeously demented. I love all her books but Dark Places and Sharp Objects are my favorites.