patrickbeverley
06-15-2008, 08:20 PM
At the moment I'm reading a book on raising children called A Good Enough Parent. It's by Bruno Bettelheim.
The advice it gives is pretty solid, which is good, but what surprised me is that the prose is really good: measured, vivid and rather reminiscent of George Orwell.
"One mother who came to me for advice was quite exasperated by the unreasonable behaviour of her little boy ... once, for example, he had suddenly started to scream and refused to budge, just as they were about to cross a busy street ...
"I suggested that she try to imagine—difficult as it is to do so, she being a mature, well-organized adult—what could make her suddenly scream, or at least feel like screaming, in the same circumstances. It only took an instant for her to realize that she might react this way if she saw something like a serious traffic accident. In a flash she understood that her son must have been terrified by something he saw or imagined. And as she pondered this, she surprised herself by remembering that when she had been about her son's age, she sometimes had been terrified that she might get lost and be unable to find her way back home.... I suggested further that her son might have feared not just for himself but for her too ..."
Has anyone else found good writing in a non-artistic setting?
The advice it gives is pretty solid, which is good, but what surprised me is that the prose is really good: measured, vivid and rather reminiscent of George Orwell.
"One mother who came to me for advice was quite exasperated by the unreasonable behaviour of her little boy ... once, for example, he had suddenly started to scream and refused to budge, just as they were about to cross a busy street ...
"I suggested that she try to imagine—difficult as it is to do so, she being a mature, well-organized adult—what could make her suddenly scream, or at least feel like screaming, in the same circumstances. It only took an instant for her to realize that she might react this way if she saw something like a serious traffic accident. In a flash she understood that her son must have been terrified by something he saw or imagined. And as she pondered this, she surprised herself by remembering that when she had been about her son's age, she sometimes had been terrified that she might get lost and be unable to find her way back home.... I suggested further that her son might have feared not just for himself but for her too ..."
Has anyone else found good writing in a non-artistic setting?