About Octavia Butler ...
Some writers have such a strong voice. I’m thinking Bradbury or Pratchett, say, where whichever work of theirs you are reading, it’s like you are sitting on the ground beside a campfire, listening to the author tell their own story. It may be funny or terrifying or heartbreaking, but it is a powerfully real story and you can’t turn away. It is a gift to be able to write anything that captivating, even once.
Some other authors write prose of such breathtaking beauty, that after reading certain passages by le Guin or Gaiman, say, you need to put the book down and go stare out the window for a while to recover.
You can only hope that, when you reread the book—and you know you will—you will be able to capture some echo of the feeling that overcame you, but you also feel a certain sadness knowing that you know you never will be able to, not in that book, and you will have to keep chasing it in other books, and you may never find it. To be able to write that would be a worthy life’s ambition.
And then there is Octavia Butler.
I am reading Kindred—for the first time, somehow—and there is is no writing. There is only story. It is as if the story sprang fully grown, like Minerva, out of the forehead of whoever makes the universe work the way it does. The fact that Butler, like all of us, must have sweated over every sentence, grinding and hammering the writing down into the flesh of the story, makes it even more remarkable.
It is as if someone handcrafted a live hummingbird out of individual molecules and then just watched it fly away.
I am in awe.