Painted Paragraphs

"Great description shakes us. It fills our lungs with the life of its author."

Painted Paragraphs, the second in a series of inspirational guides for writers and readers, is author Donald Newlove's witty, insightful, and very personal selection of the best descriptive passages in literature.

Beginning with Ernest Hemingway's dinner of oysters and wine in A Moveable Feast, Newlove moves on to give us the contents of Mildred's cupboard in Terry McMillan's Mama, Robert Stone's description of a rat-infested tug dump in Outerbridge Reach, Richard Selzer's brilliant anatomy lesson in his memoir Down from Troy, and John Edgar Wideman's mood painting of a tree by his mother's house in the black section of Pittsburgh in "All Stories Are True." Also included are selections from Tolstoy, Proust, Shakespeare, Anais Nin, lots and lots of gorgeous Whitman, and dozens more.

This idiosyncratic collection not only celebrates great authors, it explains how they use strokes of moral force and courage to paint the landscapes of their work.