For me, The Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera; On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-Ocean Vuong; Love in the Time of Cholera-Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The most tragic, painful, human suffering can be presented and these writers present it in the most excruciatingly beautiful prose.
On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-“A woman stands on the shoulder of a dirt road begging, in a tongue made obsolete by gunfire, to enter the village where her house sits, has sat for decades. It is a human story. Anyone can tell it. Can you tell? Can you tell the rain has grown heavy, its keystrokes peppering the blue shawl black?”
What is the beauty for you?
It’s not necessarily beautiful as it is cool, but there was a line in Project Hail Mary that made me go, “Oh wow,” and pause for a minute to just bask in how awesome a line it was.
The main character is realizing his mortality on his doomed space mission and, in reference to the four satellites on board with him, he says, “John, Paul, George and Ringo get to go home but my long and winding road ends here.”
As a music and sci-fi nerd, that line hit hard haha. The PHM movie has to have music by The Beatles in it!
Cool