Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Prose is such a large and broad category that it's difficult to pinpoint my "favorite prose" but I can give some examples of my favorite writers of prose.
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future. (Jack Kerouac)
That's good thinking there, Cool Breeze. Cool Breeze is a with three or four days beard sitting next to me on the stamped metal bottom of the open back part of a pickup truck. Bouncing along. Dipping and rising and rolling on these rotten springs like a boat. Out the back of the truck the city of San Francisco is bouncing down the hill, all those endless stagers of bay windows, slums with a view, bouncing and streaming down the hill. One after another, electric signs with neon martini glasses lit up on them, the San Francisco symbol of "bar"—thousands of neon-magenta martini glasses bouncing and streaming down the hill, and beneath them hundreds, thousands of people wheeling around to look at this freaking crazed truck we're in, their white faces erupting from their lapels like marshmallows—streaming and bouncing down the hill—and God knows they've got plenty to look at. (Tom Wolfe)
Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed farther than that. Plans are deliberately
indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing. Secondary roads are preferred. Paved county roads are the
best, state highways are next. Freeways are the worst. We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on
"good" rather than "time" and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. Twisting hilly roads are long in
terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any
compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads
where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where
people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer
than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding.
(Robert Pirsig)
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future. (Jack Kerouac)
That's good thinking there, Cool Breeze. Cool Breeze is a with three or four days beard sitting next to me on the stamped metal bottom of the open back part of a pickup truck. Bouncing along. Dipping and rising and rolling on these rotten springs like a boat. Out the back of the truck the city of San Francisco is bouncing down the hill, all those endless stagers of bay windows, slums with a view, bouncing and streaming down the hill. One after another, electric signs with neon martini glasses lit up on them, the San Francisco symbol of "bar"—thousands of neon-magenta martini glasses bouncing and streaming down the hill, and beneath them hundreds, thousands of people wheeling around to look at this freaking crazed truck we're in, their white faces erupting from their lapels like marshmallows—streaming and bouncing down the hill—and God knows they've got plenty to look at. (Tom Wolfe)
Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed farther than that. Plans are deliberately
indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing. Secondary roads are preferred. Paved county roads are the
best, state highways are next. Freeways are the worst. We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on
"good" rather than "time" and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. Twisting hilly roads are long in
terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any
compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads
where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where
people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer
than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding.
(Robert Pirsig)
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