From my first literary efforts, I have tried to emulate the brightest stars in the galaxy of my heroes. Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Saki, Lafcadio Hearn, Steinbeck, and Saroyan among the many others who demonstrated in their every published utterance that well-written prose, whether read silently or aloud, has melodic as well as rhythmic structure. So, if you find my phraseology pretentious, don’t blame me. The fault is in my stars.
The above declaration is the first paragraph of the preface to my forthcoming novel, The Swing Time Soda Emporium. With that statement, I hoped to circumvent expected cries of “purple prose” by literary critics—some with impressive credentials and some self-described. But perhaps, if I hope to avoid such accusations I must offer further clarification.
Purple prose, as defined in Wikipedia, is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall.
The phrase, Purple passages comes ultimately from the Roman poet Horace’s Ars Poetica (first century BCE). He used the Latin phrase purpureus pannus (a purple cloth or purple patch) to criticize a showy, decorative bit of writing that has been stitched into a work where it does not properly belong. — Merriam Webster
The following excerpt from the first chapter of that same book immediately follows the moment when Morty finally must accept the fact that his beloved Poppy has died:
And now the dam bursts, and I am drowning in a saline flood. My legs cannot support me, and I fall to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. I can no longer avoid the truth that I have tried so hard to disavow. My sweetheart, my life, my beloved Poppy is gone.
Someone—I neither know nor care who—helps me to my feet and leads me to an armchair in the back of the room. I more lie than sit in the chair while moans that no mere human could muster, the moans of a wounded water buffalo erupt from somewhere in the nether reaches of my soul, racking my wretched frame in abject agony and bursting forth in a rafter-rattling bellow. I don’t care that my cries disturb the other mourners. Still, I make a valiant effort to cease my bawling, but it is several minutes before I can rein in my expressions of grief to a guileless whimpering of heartbreak.
I maintain that the phraseology of this passage is not appreciably more ornate than other descriptive narration in the book. I have simply used more emotionally charged words and phrases: the moans of a wounded water buffalo, abject agony, nether reaches of my soul, guileless whimpering of heartbreak. But the depth of Morty’s grief is important to the story, and how else could I convey the intensity of his passion? How else might a writer express the ecstasy of a first kiss in the second chapter of Diverging Streams or the agony of cancer devouring one’s entrails in my short story, The Raveled Sleeve of Care. I don’t believe Andreyev, Gogol, or Dostoyevsky were ever accused of purple prose or that the critics ever tore into the writings of Edgar Allen Poe.