karisama wrote:
I've also observed that British people are the best writers. I don't have a favourite author who's American :/
I used to be under this impression as well, but what occurred as I got older is that the American writers (especially of the mystery genre) were generally much more masterful with their wordplay, while the British authors of the Golden Age came off as better storytellers. There are exceptions, of course--John Dickson Carr was American yet wrote like Agatha Christie, for starters.
Here's a completely subjective comparison from two already on my desk. I hurried and typed these early exploratory portions, so forgive any typos that may have gotten through:
The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett
- A voice said, "Thank you," so softly that only the purest articulation made the words intelligible, and a young woman came through the doorway. She advanced slowly, with tentative steps, looking at Spade with cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and probing.
She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made.
Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie
- Mary Debenham had had little sleep since she left Baghdad on the preceding Thursday. Neither in the train to Kirkuk, nor in the Rest House at Mosul, nor last night on the train had she slept properly. Now, weary of lying wakeful in the hot stuffiness of her overheated compartment, she got up and peered out.
This must be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poorly lighted platform with loud, furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must be very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, but it would not go.
I think that, while they are both very effective in their own right, I generally find myself basking in the actual writing itself more often with American authors than British ones. The Brits were always very straight-laced with their (detective) stories and never really got to the point where I would stop and just be like, "Wow, this is absolutely amazing writing."
As stories, they are amazing. There were so many times when I was younger that I would very anxiously read the end of a Christie novel just with the knowledge she was about to trick me, but I never knew how. At the end of so many of them, including Death on the Nile, Five Little Pigs, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, and of course Curtain, I was always completely taken in by the methods. At the time, they were all very unique twists--now, not so much. So many of the turnabouts Christie first utilized have now been recycled time and time and time and time again, sometimes with only a little influence, sometimes with a lot (here's looking at you, Gosho!).
In short, I call the American style evidenced above the raindrop approach. It is so descriptive in the way it paints a picture that, if described properly, you can imagine the exact dimensions of a raindrop. All the same, the British style is much more reminiscent of a campfire story: very direct, very linear with details, and painting only a broad but all-encompassing yet somehow sweeping picture.
Thanks to the wonders of the English language, we can have and love both equally.
(Oh, and I'll post a list later tonight. Good idea for a topic; can never have enough book discussion here.
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(It's overrated.) (Fans: that's just my opinion! No offense intended. Seriously.)
Reading is bliss. I've always wanted to be a book worm (a little weird I am, perhaps, for saying that?) but I'm just not the avid reader I wish I were.
