Unlocking the Secret Symphony: How Rhythmic Writing Transforms Language into Music
Another example of this type of rhythm through word choice can be seen in Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay when he describes the crowd disembarking from the ferry into Manhattan in the WWII era:
“… taut-jawed men in stiff hats and suits and obsidian shoes, newspapers pinned under their arms; brusque, brick-lipped, hard-heeled women in floral dresses …”
There are some interesting things to note here. First, the bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam rhythm of “taut-jawed men in stiff hats” [emphasis mine], which is then followed with “and suits and obsidian shoes,” which starts to replicate the pattern but then disrupts it, similar to what we saw in Kavan’s piece. Then, there is the tight, hard, two-syllable pattern with brick-lipped, hard- heeled women that has three consecutive two-syllable words with hard consonants. The sentence ends with another set of two-syllable words, floral dresses, but this time the pattern is both replicated (consecutive two-syllable words) and broken (softer consonants).
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