Life – a user's manual Part II - Boksidan

It may be easier to find something to write about an environment that is created for an event that will
happened. For example, a table setting for a coffee break.
In this case, the author, for example,
may describe the furniture, the table
setting, point out that there is no milk
cartons or the fact that the table is set
for five persons. It is of course
depending on what's going to happen
there and who made the table setting.
If it were set for a birthday party, one
would, tentatively, write that the table
setting was pretty meager, but if it on
the contrary, was set for a regular
coffee break at work .....
Here are some different types of environmental descriptions taken from a number of novels.
In the viewer's eye’s
Many novels are written so that it is clear that there is a person (usually the protagonist) who observes the
environments. For those who choose this approach, it is important that they are described in a manner
consistent with the viewers supposed personality. The easiest way to do this is probably to try to imagine
what the person in question would have told you about if he had told you about the scene. So maybe
Norman Mailer did when he wrote this (note that it is written in I-form and present, which is unusual):
"So often I go to these emerald green swamps in the end of the town, I think of the pilgrims. The coastal
dunes farther out are so low that you can see the ships along the horizon even when the water is invisible.
Sport fishing boats seems to travel in caravans across the sand. If I have a drink inside, I start laughing,
because opposite the memorial plaque over the pilgrims, not five ten feet from the stable where the United
States began, is the entrance to a big motel. It may not be uglier than any other giant motel but it is certainly
not more beautiful either, and the only tribute to pilgrims is that they call it the "inn". The paved parking is
as large as a football field."
From "Tough guys don’t dance" by Norman Mailer.
The novel "The Window" (see below) is very rich in environmental descriptions, and about half of the 100
first lines of the book contains text that describes an environment. As the following excerpt in which a small
digression on garden walls that leads us to understand that the main character is in an exclusive area. The
novel is written entirely in the I-form and the past, but the description is strangely impersonal.
"The road was lined with estates surrounded by walls and fences. Some had high walls, some had low walls,
some with an ornate iron fence, some were a bit old-fashioned and coped with large hedges. The street had
no sidewalk. There was no one who walked in this area, not even the mail man.
The evening was warm, but not as hot as in Pasadena. It was a hypnotic fragrance of flowers and sunshine, a
gentle rustling of garden sprinklers behind hedges and walls, the clear crackling sound of lawnmowers that
delicately moved over peaceful lawns."
From “The Window" by Raymond Chandler.
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