He doesn't use a lot of adjectives. It's very honest, to-the-point writing; he's not using any flourishes, not making the writing too flowery. I actually found it quite refreshing, because I'm reading Ginsberg right now and even though he's fantastic, his writing is pretty much all adjectives. Mr. Salzman is very plot oriented.
The book was in fact very funny, like in this passage,
but there were parts that moved me to tears, and parts that seemed sort of wistful, like he was regretting things that could not be. I found this form of writing really satisfying because it seemed realistic. Life doesn't just have one tone; it's fickle and changing and some parts are funny and some parts make you want to move to China and study wushu for the rest of your life. You just never know."When everyone had eaten they took turns dropping their trousers, leaning off the sides of the boats and using the river as a toilet. At the same time, Old Ding insisted it was time to wash up. He dipped an iron cup into the filthy water and began splashing it on his face and neck, inviting me to do the same. I declined, to everyone's surprise... everyone agreed that it was an odd thing that Americans who supposedly live in a fantastical future world understand so little about personal hygiene." (128)
I loved reading Iron and Silk. I felt a very personal connection with the book, because I practice karate and a couple other martial arts and I guess even though I don't have that cherry-blossoms-and-kimonos thing going with my dojo, I think that gong fu comes in all different types. So maybe even though my karate isn't gong fu in the years-of-tradition-and-history sense, it does have gong fu in that I have devoted most of my life to it. I also think that Mark Salzman is a fantastic writer and must be so interesting to talk to. He's devoted his life to the two things most important things in mine.
Sarah said that Salzman didn't use any flourishes and that the writing wasn't flowery. I however disagree, Salzman did use flourishes in his writing you just didn't realize it because he incorporated them, in just a way that it wasn't him describing something it was you seeing it through his eyes. He was able to do so due to the fact that he wrote the book in a very factual kind of diary format. An example of this occurs when Mark is explaining the differences between his different teachers Zheng and Pan. "My lessons with Zheng differed in many ways from my lessons with Pan. The moment I entered Pan's training hall I could feel his eyes on me, 'There is so little time--don't waste an instant!'"(pg.108) Through this little snip-it of text, Mark has been able to instill a sense of emergency by his word choice. He has also used the description of Pan's eyes on his back to help you understand that Pan's teaching style is more serious. While you are reading this particular passage you don't really notice the way that Mark uses this description to further his storytelling. It's hard to isolate these little flourishes but they are in almost every paragraph pushing the reader to see and feel what Mark felt in these moments. It is in this subtle way that Mark incorporates these little flourishes that make the book lively and relatable.
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