I love knowing that Coelho's parent attempted to institutionalize him, but he escaped three times.
Coelho is an important and ubiquitous voice. Last year I picked up The Pilgrimage and was quickly swept away by the simplicity of prose that you describe. (He also must have an invaluable translator). I immediately sent this book to my 18-year-old son, hoping that he will find affinity with the journeys he has been invested. Simplicity of prose is Coelho's talent, indeed, and it has helped me to attempt to re-orient my own writing with accessibility in mind. The poets, tricksters, and shamans, as Margaret Atwood explains, are stationed at the hinge to help us navigate these greater worlds. The telling of numinous experiences does not have to be high brow, complex, or only for the edified and initiated. Otherwise, reading and writing becomes an exclusive activity. I used to write to and from the "Environmental club", so-to-speak, a legacy grounded in Thoreau, Emerson, Carson, and I substantiated all of my claims with an abundancy of quotes from other environmental know-it-alls. An unfortunate practice. Today's environmental writer has a tendency to insulate himself within the heritage and to be propped up by only other environmental writers, which creates a very narrow world, accessable only to the choir. That is why I have suggested to Gordon and Amy to write beyond the two shelves of Christian literature as Coelho has done. Even a heathen such as myself can gain access and benefit. The art to conveying these rites of passages, especially for today's reader, is to tap and wake up the magical child we may have buried. I hope that you remember the magic of your home when you move on to becoming as well-read as Coehlo. So few Southcoast regional writers have successfully captured the magic of our deep place I think.
Coelho is unique in that his prose is so simple, yet carries all the elegance of any "high-brow" literary work. What makes this all the more astonishing is, as you alluded to, his work has all been translated from Portuguese!
I love The Pilgrimage as well. I think you (as a "heathen") ought to check out The Fifth Mountain as well. That is a fantastic story taken straight out of the terse, esoteric Old Testament, yet in its between-the-lines tale of a deeply human and relatable Biblical figure (Elijah), you get a surprisingly authentic feel for life as it must have felt in the time between King David and the Babylonian occupation.
I love knowing that Coelho's parent attempted to institutionalize him, but he escaped three times.
ReplyDeleteCoelho is an important and ubiquitous voice. Last year I picked up The Pilgrimage and was quickly swept away by the simplicity of prose that you describe. (He also must have an invaluable translator). I immediately sent this book to my 18-year-old son, hoping that he will find affinity with the journeys he has been invested.
Simplicity of prose is Coelho's talent, indeed, and it has helped me to attempt to re-orient my own writing with accessibility in mind. The poets, tricksters, and shamans, as Margaret Atwood explains, are stationed at the hinge to help us navigate these greater worlds. The telling of numinous experiences does not have to be high brow, complex, or only for the edified and initiated. Otherwise, reading and writing becomes an exclusive activity.
I used to write to and from the "Environmental club", so-to-speak, a legacy grounded in Thoreau, Emerson, Carson, and I substantiated all of my claims with an abundancy of quotes from other environmental know-it-alls. An unfortunate practice. Today's environmental writer has a tendency to insulate himself within the heritage and to be propped up by only other environmental writers, which creates a very narrow world, accessable only to the choir. That is why I have suggested to Gordon and Amy to write beyond the two shelves of Christian literature as Coelho has done. Even a heathen such as myself can gain access and benefit.
The art to conveying these rites of passages, especially for today's reader, is to tap and wake up the magical child we may have buried. I hope that you remember the magic of your home when you move on to becoming as well-read as Coehlo. So few Southcoast regional writers have successfully captured the magic of our deep place I think.
Stupendous work!
Coelho is unique in that his prose is so simple, yet carries all the elegance of any "high-brow" literary work. What makes this all the more astonishing is, as you alluded to, his work has all been translated from Portuguese!
ReplyDeleteI love The Pilgrimage as well. I think you (as a "heathen") ought to check out The Fifth Mountain as well. That is a fantastic story taken straight out of the terse, esoteric Old Testament, yet in its between-the-lines tale of a deeply human and relatable Biblical figure (Elijah), you get a surprisingly authentic feel for life as it must have felt in the time between King David and the Babylonian occupation.