This is a clever bit of prose – “a man presents himself and a small boy” – the himself here makes the “He” that starts the next sentence, which is nicely about their names and the fact they aren’t used except in dialogue, correct when otherwise it would have been a common antecedent error. Sort of feel like you’re mirroring the absence of names by arranging it this way.

This is the way I might describe some of Henry James or some choice pieces of Poe. An interesting observation – it’s always hard to put one’s finger on what causes certain writers to get under our skin and it’s also one of the prose-styles that really interests me.

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House certainly is somewhat more strange in plot and setting but the prose and the way it shifts in and out of first-person but never in an easily noticed way (often it’s hidden in the middle of a paragraph of Eleanor’s thoughts) evokes this sort of uncanny elusiveness as well; prose and poetry that is hard to describe the allure of is actually one of the topics I’ve spent a lot of time researching in the hopes of 1) being able to replicate it and 2) being able to write a paper about how writers accomplish the kind of thing you’re getting at here.

For a poet who’s “poeticness” defies my abilities to describe cf. Louise Glück, Yale’s Poet-in-Residence. I see her poems and I know its poetry but if you asked me what makes it poetry I’d be hard pressed to describe it.

I rather think if you said something like this to me about my prose I would think it an insult. I guess I’m confused about “plainly elegant” as a description – do you mean it is both “plain” and “elegant” or it so “elegant” you can’t describe it any other way than “elegant” and thus it is “plainly elegant”?

I’m confused. Does this mean the prose is enticing or pedestrian?

Stephen Pringle sounds like a pen-name. Not sure I trust this article, who is this guy? Might be J.M. Coetzee in disguise when he was stoned and hungry for some canned chips.