the road, it hath been rutted.

dear sarah prince and i have been e-chatting about books; at the end of one message she confessed, Oh, and the next book on my desk here is set in London, 1135, and is called "The Flame and the Flower". Ahhhh yeeeeeeaaaahh. thanks to googlebooks, 10 minutes and 25 pages later, i had some things to say about it.
































the flame & the flower equals snap. bang. oh, rexy: you so sexy. f me, i kind of have to read this now. somewhere in the world, time no doubt whistled by on taut and widespread wings, but here in the english countryside slowly, painfully, as if it trod the rutted road that spread across the moors on blistered feet. a few things. a) that opening sentence by kathleene woodiwiss gives her away as someone who gets the fundamental properties of sexing up your words, which is to b) give the sentence alliterative beats: in the world, time no doubt whistled by on taut and widespread wings ... it trod the rutted road; b2) seriously, you could chop up that sentence and make the first stanza of a saucy little poem; and it would be saucy, because c) it follows another rule of the sauce, which is to work as many naughty words into ordinary sentences as you can: whistled; taut; rutted; spread; blistered; wide(fucking)spread; d) you can even count moors because it makes you think of the moor, othello, and the figure of the virile, defiant, foreign black man has been known to make women want to spread wide, whistle, rut, blister; e) trod is one of my most-loved words of the minute: i love announcing i've trod on some stuff, kind of like how f) i love claiming to be clad in things, which works especially well with regard to boots, a vest, chaps---and you know who else likes being clad i bet? g) kathleene motherfucking woodiwiss. it's not enough to put the e on the end of her first name, stretching it out--kathleene--she also just goes for it with the last: woodiwiss. that's some old-school alliteration, evocative of a lesbian greek seer, or a wood nymph, or taking a leak in the forest, or trying to pee while you have a boner. i'm sold, is what i'm telling you.