Posted: March 31, 2022

Purple Prose

Purple prose, it's the bane of a writer's existence. Like a noisome stench pulled from the depths of perdition, it infects their prose, tearing at the very fiber of literary excellence, rending joint from sinew --

Um . . . sorry.

Purple prose, meaning writing so overblown that it interferes with the storytelling, has evidently been a problem for a long time. We first heard the term in Horace's Poetic Arts, written more than 2000 years ago.

Weighty openings and grand declarations often Have one or two purple patches tacked on, that gleam Far and wide, when Diana's grove and her altar, The winding stream hastening through lovely fields, Or the river Rhine, or the rainbow's being described. There's no place for them here. Perhaps you know how To draw a cypress tree: so what, if you've been given Money to paint a sailor plunging from a shipwreck In despair?

Recently, I cut some of the purple out of a passage from Elizabeth George's latest mystery, Something to Hide. One commentor complained that I was draining the writing of some of its richness out of a misplaced need to jump into the story more quickly. The commentor mentioned paint-by-number art.

But prose doesn't turn purple as soon as it begins to dwell on evocative details or use complex language. In fact, some of the writers I enjoy most -- John Crowley, Mark Halperin, William Faulkner -- could not be accused of being minimalist. And Ms. George, in her earlier novels, wrote richly-drawn characters, but much greater simplicity of style.

Writing is pushed into the purple zone when the style starts to get in the way of the story. In the Elizabeth George example, she had said just before the edited passage that the point of view character was distracted, thinking about his girlfriend. She then went on to describe the view around him in painstaking, sometimes repetitive detail. Taken in isolation, the description wasn't awful, but it didn't fit the moment or the character. The description became an end in itself, and the story was sidelined.

Purple prose is often, though not always, self-conscious. If you're ignoring your story to indulge your own descriptive talents, you do tend to focus on yourself. The strain often shows. I think I first realized this when I was in college, reading the first of the Sword of Shannara books. For those of you unfamiliar, this is a series of fantasy novels by Terry Brooks following the path blazed by Tolkien. The thing that offended my nascent editorial sensibilities was passages like this one:

In the midst of the chilling cries, with a low rumble that sounded from the heart of the earth, the Hadeshorn opened at its center in the manner of a thrashing whirlpool and from out of its murky waters rose the shroud of an old man, bowed with age. The figure rose to full height and appeared to stand on the waters themselves, the tall, thin body a transparent gray of ghostlike hue that shimmered like the lake beneath it. Flick [the point of view character] turned completely white. The appearance of this final horror only confirmed his belief that their last moments on earth were at hand.

Here Flick would certainly be paying attention -- Brooks isn't ignoring his characters. But it's hard to imagine Flick would describe what was happening in quite the terms Brooks uses. If he's in fear for his life, would he really recognize that his beliefs were confirmed by an appearance with a ghostlike hue?

Compare this to a passage from the actual Tolkien, of the appearance of the Balrog from The Fellowship of the Ring.

But it was not the trolls that had filled the Elf with terror. The ranks of the orcs had opened, and they crowded away, as if they themselves were afraid. Something was coming up behind them. What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it.

The language is certainly formal -- "to be in it and to go before it" is not a construction that comes up in everyday conversation. But it doesn't feel as stilted as Brooks. After all, Tolkien was a philologist, steeped in the rigorous language of academia and early- and middle-English texts, which have a very different rhythm to them. Elaborate structures came naturally to him, and so his language flows more naturally for readers.

One final caveat -- some readers do read fiction primarily for the striking and original use of language, whether it interferes with the story or not. They read prose for the same reason people read poetry -- after all, you don't read Elliot to find out what happened to J. Alfred Prufrock. Well, De gustibus non est disputandum ("There's no arguing over tastes") predates even Horace and still makes good sense.

Speaking personally, though, I can appreciate beautiful prose. But beautiful prose that serves a storytelling purpose is what really does the job.