Metaphors

I am in the process of reading (and enjoying) Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March. The language of this prose-master excites me. Check out some of these metaphors, similies, and other language usage innovations from the maestro.

... he listened, trying to remain comfortable but gradually becoming like a man determined not to let a grasshopper escape from his hand (Bellow, p. 4, NY: Penguin).

I tried to explain something of this to your brother, but his thoughts are about as steady as the way a drunkard pees (p. 55).

Poor nails, he didn't look good...An immense face like raked garden soil in need of water...he turned death nosed, white as a polyp, even in his deepest wrinkles. (p. 95-96)

...as soon as he inherited the fortune it darted and wriggled away like a collection of little gold animals that had obeyed only the old man's voice (p. 116).

The spirit I found him in was the Chanticleer spirit, by which I refer to male piercingness, sharpness, knotted hard muscle and blood in the comb, jerky, flaunty, haughty and bright, with luxurious slither of feathers (p. 168).