One good example is George Eliot, who at the end of most chapters summarized the lesson to be learned from what had just been recounted. I've noted a few of my favorite examples from her writing in the Quotes section of this blog. (You'll need to scroll down a wee bit.)
The most recent "Aha!" in this regard came as I was reading Willa Cather's "The Professor's House." As is often the case these days, I recently realized I'd never read any of her works, even though she is held in high regard as an author. Once again the Palatine library rose to the challenge of providing the material to put this author to the test.
I've gotten out of the habit of noting quotable quotes as I read these days, but I'd only reached page 6 when I realized I should reinstate that behavior. It was just a turn of phrase, but a very nice one.
In the middle of a paragraph describing Professor St. Peter's garden, we are given this observation: "St. Peter had tended this bit of ground for over twenty years, and had got the upper hand of it."
That simple phrase caught my attention, but a couple dozen pages later Cather stopped me dead in my tracks with this:
The Professor made no reply to this. Lillian [his wife] had been fiercely jealous of Tom Outland. As he left the house, he was reflecting that people who are intensely in love when they marry, and who go on being in love, always meet with something which suddenly or gradually makes a difference. Sometimes it is the children, or the grubbiness of being poor, sometimes a second infatuation. In their own case, it had been, curiously enough, his pupil, Tom Outland.Now that's an interesting observation. Time to get back to reading.
