As I said, this is probably hopeless, but I just had to ask. Thanks for all efforts on my behalf.
@SpatzieLover, I know it can’t be that because I’m pulling this memory forward from two or three decades ago. The Patterson books are too recent. Not that he mightn’t have given some similar advice.
@CWOTUS, there is a distinct resonance there, but this is different. The article writer was showing how one single well-chosen detail could stand for a lot of others. Using the short story (I think it was a short story) as an example, the article writer was saying that there’s no need to mention the threadbare rug, the faded bedspread, the dripping faucet, or any of the order sordid particulars; given this one nasty-looking wallpaper stain, we can see the whole room.
I am working with a client who seems to feel that it’s to his credit to put in every last detail of everything. His descriptions are mercilessly exhaustive. He is trying manfully to respond to others’ calls for concrete sensory detail, and he doesn’t get the idea of selectivity. I thought of this long-ago-read article, with its memorable example, and wished I could show it to him.
@janbb, that was some wallpaper, all right, and that’s one of the creepiest stories I ever read, but no, it wasn’t that. I feel pretty certain that the context was a detective peering into a motel room, and the story author’s telling us all we needed to know about its appearance by just describing the stain.
@Earthgirl, Barton Fink is much too recent too. The story being discussed might have been old enough to be O’Connor’s. But what I am after here is not the story itself, but rather, an article about writing that cited it as an example.
The article could have been in The Writer magazine, which I used to read faithfully in the 1960s to 1980s.
This whole question is a long shot, but I have seen flutherfolk pull out some pretty amazing answers from time to time.