Celle, détaillée, de John Dickson Carr :
«There was a chair at Dick’s elbow. He sat down in the chair. Colonel Pope, the owner of this cottage, had turned the sitting-room into a place of shabby and slippered comfort. Pipe-smoke had tinged grey the white-plaster walls, and seasoned the oak beams. Round the walls ran a single line of military prints from the early and middle nineteenth century, their colours of battle and uniform softened by time yet still vivid» (p. 44).
«Dick leaned back in the chair. He felt bruised and deflated; but he was not feeling the worst yet, for the shock had not passed off. This placid sitting-room, with its military prints and its dark oak beams and its Benares brass ornaments on the mantelpiece, seemed as unreal as the history of Lesley» (p. 61).
Celle, condensée, de Nicholson Baker :
«so pipe-smokingly Indo-European» (p. 70).
On peut préférer la seconde à la première.
P.-S.—Certes, ce n’est pas la première fois que nous croisons cette citation de Nicholson Baker.
Références
Baker, Nicholson, The Size of Thoughts. Essays and Other Lumber, New York, Random House, 1996, 355 p. Ill.
Carr, John Dickson, Till Death Do Us Part, Londres, British Library, coll. «British Library Crime Classics», 2021, 254 p. Édition originale : 1944. Introduction de Martin Edwards.
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