Modestly subtitled “A Handbook for Writers of English Prose,” the book was never merely that. The Reader Over Your Shoulder has been called the authors’ contribution to the war effort. It would be too much to say that they thought good English could save the world. But to Graves and Hodge, clear and logical prose was not a mere nicety: “The writing of good English is … a moral matter, as the Romans held that the writing of good Latin was.”
I find the line “Kay Rimmer sat with her head in her hands and her eyes on the floor” perfectly ok, since the natural place of the head in not in the hands nor of the eyes on the floor.
ReplyDeleteI think that anyone reading Greene’s novel would know what he is saying, and I don’t know what the sentence has to do with metaphor. We all know what it means to have our head in our hands. That said, the question is funny.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is. Perhaps the writers used this example for that reason alone: to get a laugh out of the reader.
ReplyDelete