2) Sometimes he can write a simple sentence that, IMHO, actually says much more than the words themselves. "My palms were ringing with anger." (page 251) My palms have done that, but I didn't know the words to express it.
The ability to do that is the mark of a great writer...one of my favorite 20th Century authors is James Dickey...and he definitely had that ability.
In "Deliverance" the protagonist describes the ramshackle "Griner Brothers Garage," where the quartet of weekend frontiersmen is trying to arrange a car shuttle for their ill-fated weekend canoeing adventure:
It was dark and iron smelling, hot with the closed in heat that brings the sweat out as though it had been waiting all over your body for the right signal. Anvils stood around, or lay on their sides, and chains hung down, covered with coarse, deep grease. The air was full of hooks; there were sharp points everywhere – tools and nails, and ripped-open rusty tin cans. Batteries stood on benches and on the floor, luminous and green, and through everything, out of the high roof, mostly, came this clanging hammering, meant to deafen and even blind. It was odd to be there, not yet seen, paining with the metal harshness in the half-dark.
To me, that one phrase, "The air was full of hooks," perfectly described the scene...it's stuck with me for many years and I can't think of Dickey or Deliverance without that image immediately popping into my head.
