Smallcreep's Descriptive Writing

I think my father was always impressed by highly descriptive writing. When I was a teenager he recommended Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to me, principally for the political message of the book (which turns out to be completely spurious, but that’s another story). However, he told me that his favourite passage in the book is a description of a tortoise crossing the road. Steinbeck devotes an entire chapter (albeit a very short one) to describing in minute detail the scene as the reptile climbs the bank, crosses the road and gets hit by a truck. I remember being very impressed by this passage myself. When Dad wrote his own book it gave him an opportunity to practice this style of writing for himself, and he made a very good job of it too. Here’s a video of Peter Currell Brown reading a passage from his book Smallcreep’s Day about some pipes on a wall.

It’s interesting that The Grapes of Wrath is a book with an intensely political message, and my Father was interested in the politics, but his favourite passage was a description of a natural event which appeared to have no bearing on the story whatsoever. Steinbeck may have intended the tortoise to be a metaphor, but that was lost on me as a teenager. Similarly, Smallcreep’s Day is a book with a political message, but Dad’s favourite passage is a description of something rather mundane – some pipes running round a wall. The way the words are used to describe the subject is far more important than the subject of the description. Are the pipes intended as a metaphor too?