How NOT to write a sentence

This spoof of the style of one of my least favorite political figures (go ahead, guess!) arrived on a birthday card:

"A birthday is a time, another notch in the road, another fork on the table to where you're progressing into some kind of state where a distant shore's advancin' and callin' you up higher, and mostly it's just all about staying the same while you change into even more of who you are! And cake and candles totally honor that, oh you betcha!"

For entertainment value, sometimes bad writing is the best writing!

Sentence Structure that Reinforces Meaning

If the upcoming "Jeopardy" match between humans and a computer named Watson is on your calendar, you might also enjoy Brian Christian’s article “Mind vs. Machine” in the March issue of The Atlantic. Here’s a sentence of his that’s not only thought-provoking but also a pleasure to read:


“The story of the 21st century will be, in part, the story of the drawing and redrawing of these battle lines, the story of Homo sapiens trying to stake a claim on shifting ground, flanked by beast and machine, pinned between meat and math.”

Christian’s theme is the competition between human and human-invented artificial intelligence, and his main tool, the pairing or repeating of words and sounds, echoes that theme:

• “the story of…, the story of”

• “drawing and redrawing”

• “beast and machine” (with assonance)

• “meat and math” (with alliteration)

• the final two parallel phrases, each a participle followed by a prep phrase with a compound object.

Christian’s skillful sentence construction eloquently reinforces his meaning without calling attention to itself. Bravo!

A beautiful style laughing at itself

If you read enough writing magazines and books, you'll quickly become sick of the terms "literary novel" and  "literary style." What exactly makes a writer's style literary? And if it's not literary, what is it?

I have my own tentative answer: we might call a style literary when it is as important to the writer (and maybe to the reader) as the content is; when it not only conveys the writer's meaning but is artful in itself; at its best, when it is so original that it constitutes the writer's signature.

Literary technique can, of course, be abused. The annual Bad Writing Contest (http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2010.htm) showcases writers who are skilled enough to turn "literary" writing on its ear (speaking of bad metaphors). My latest favorite writer, Joseph Caldwell, should be given the Grand Prize for his hilarious parody of "beautiful" writing in The Pig Did It, in which a pompous but lovelorn writing teacher (of course) has come to Ireland to grieve:

“His stretch of beach would be deserted. His solitude would be inviolate, his loneliness unobserved and unremarked except by the sea itself. There would, of course, be gulls, there would be curlews. He would hear their shrieks and watch the curve of their spread wings riding a current of air so rarefied that only a feather could find it. Perhaps there would be cormorants and, if he was lucky, a lone ship set against the horizon. There would be squalls and storms, crashing water, and thundering clouds. Lightning would crack the sky. Winds would lash the cliffs and—again, if he was lucky—rocks would be riven and great stones thrown into the sea. Then he, Aaron McCloud, would walk the shore unperturbed, his solitude, his loneliness, a proud and grieving dismissal of all that might intrude on his newly won sorrows.”

I won't enumerate the techniques used here except the one that creates the humor: the stretching of each image or sound effect just far enough that it screams--and we are screaming with laughter. That Caldwell is a master of literary writing is apparent even while we're laughing at his joke. I'll read one of his serious novels next.

For more on The Pig Did It, including another great passage, go to: http://bookwomanjanreviews.blogspot.com/2011/01/pig-did-it-by-joseph-caldwell.html