Why this is good prose: “We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.”
This is the beginning of Justin Torres’ brilliant new novel We the Animals, and this is good prose because a) of the speed which is a stomping rhythm evoking at once a saturday morning with lots of fun and corn flakes and a wednesday evening with lots of pain and fights with, yes: b) words which are quite simple and real like “bowls” or “angry men” but still speak of a larger context, this “bowl” becomes the bowl of all bowls, the skinny arms become the very sign of youth and fear and insecurity which c) this whole paragraph leaves open, does not spell out, there is a feeling to it, there is a view of the world, there is anger, there is a longing, to go back where you know you cannot go back to and you know you would not want to be back, just because it was awful and still so beautiful that you never ever forget. So style, in language as in life, is elegant and knowing and always a little off, because life is lived in the off.