Simply Similes

Even if it's only as an aside, I sometimes like to isolate a delectable sentence or two for my students so they have occasion to think about the power and the beauties of language use, sentence construction, etc. I've been reading a profile of Steve Buscemi in the current New Yorker (during my 42 seconds of leisure time this week) and Woolf's To the Lighthouse for my Brit Lit survey class, and each has caused me to pause over similes -- one of the humorous variety, one of the stunning variety. You'll smile knowingly (if you can picture Buscemi) when John Lahr describes him by noting that "nothing about Buscemi's physical presence suggests the poetic lineaments of masculine film glamour. He is pale, almost pallid--as if he'd been reared in a mushroom cellar. In a certain light, he can look almost cadaverous. His eyes are large and bulgy, with a hint of melancholy. When he smiles, his mouth displays a shantytown of uneven, uncapped teeth."

Woolf may be the most accomplished 'simile-ist' I've ever encountered. Consider this one from To the Lighthouse, which finds Mr. Ramsay, in an endearing if ultimately unsuccessful way, trying to make amends with his young son, James (although, now that I look at it, it's only properly a simile in the mind of Mrs. Ramsay as she compares him to a sea lion!). The passage then moves into a positively stunning example of descriptive writing (amateur nature photographers like myself will appreciate the concluding image): "Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr. Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded his son's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day."