tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88914247540186819022024-02-08T10:28:01.704-05:00In Search of the Perfect Sentenceby Jan TarasovicJanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-84906772176159354132013-07-24T15:35:00.004-04:002014-03-07T09:52:41.818-05:00A life in a few sentences<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">Unlike many readers, I love the piling-up of details. A series of short phrases can create a rhythm that pulls us into the dance of the writing. Here Junot Diaz uses two such series to encapsulate the life a young girl hopes for (sent. 1) and the one she's had so far (sent. 3). It's a novel in four sentences.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;"><i>What exactly it was she wanted was never clear either: her own incredible life, yes, a handsome, wealthy husband, yes, beautiful children, yes, a woman’s body, without question. If I had to put it to words I’d say what she wanted, more than anything, was what she’d always wanted throughout her Lost Childhood: to escape. From what was easy to enumerate: the bakery, her school, dull-ass Baní, sharing a bed with her madre, the inability to buy the dresses she wanted, having to wait until fifteen to straighten her hair, the impossible expectations of La Inca, the fact that her long-gone parents had died when she was one, the whispers that Trujillo had done it, those first years of her life when she’d been an orphan, the horrible scars from that time, her own despised black skin. But where she wanted to escape to she could not tell you.</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;"> from<i> </i></span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">The long, itemized series--what she wants and what she lives-- alternate with shorter, elegantly constructed noun clauses, </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">three ribs forming a skeleton that supports the weight of the passage:</span><br />
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<li><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;"><i>What </i>exactly it was she wanted...</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">From <i>what</i> was easy...</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">But<i> where </i>she wanted to escape to...</span></span></li>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">When I started reading, I wasn't sure I liked Diaz's slangy, </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">uninhibited </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.09375px;">style, peppered with vulgarities in two languages. By the time I finished, I understood why he had won the Pulitzer--mostly for the gradually unfolding story of a family and a country, but also for his mastery of wordcraft.</span>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-77630301548654500312012-03-28T13:15:00.002-04:002012-03-28T13:15:22.560-04:00Sentences about Sentences<br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">From <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/my-lifes-sentences/?scp=3&sq=lahiri&st=cse">"My Life's Sentences"</a> by Jhumpa Lahiri</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Surely it is a magical
thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a
place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect
us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">The best sentences
orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">They remain the test,
whether or not to read something. The most compelling narrative, expressed in
sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me
cold. In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense,
painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe
and shift about, like live matter in soil. </span></i></div>
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<br />Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-26870493613046500692012-01-09T12:00:00.005-05:002012-01-09T12:06:10.277-05:00Hamilton Cain: Playing with Parts of Speech<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Changing nouns or adjectives into verbs--<i>prioritize, activate</i>--is a natural part of our ever-changing language, even though many writers and editors hate such forms. Multi-syllabic verbs with Latinate suffixes can indeed bog down our sentences. But a skilled writer, by turning a word on its ear and slipping it into an unusual place in a sentence, can illuminate meaning in an original and pleasing way.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Hamilton Cain is one such writer, as seen in these sentences from his memoir <i>This Boy's Faith</i>:</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> <i>a screen door<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>resined</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>with insects</i></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> Now she’d embedded herself in the ball of my skull, where she<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>preyed</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>like a Venus flytrap on the thoughts that buzzed there, her leaves hinged open, waiting to spring.</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> the muddy, serpentine rivers that<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>veined</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>the South</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> The path<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>horseshoed<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></b>behind the falls.</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> He lunged across the blanket and hooked Craig in an elbow vise, toppling Trudie’s Fanta can and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>geysering</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>fizz over her baloney sandwich and a slick of wax paper.</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> I’d bask in the spiritual passion<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>raying</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>out from the canvases of Tiepolo and Fra Angelico at the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on"><st1:place u1:st="on"><st1:placename u1:st="on">Metropolitan</st1:placename><span class="apple-converted-space"></span></st1:place></st1:placename> </st1:place></span><st1:placetype w:st="on"><st1:placetype u1:st="on">Museum</st1:placetype></st1:placetype>.</i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">You have to be a writer of great instinct and precision to use this technique well. The new form of the old word has to fit smoothly in the sentence, enhancing the meaning without drawing attention to itself. I've seen awkward, self-conscious attempts that make me cringe, so finding a writer who does it sparingly and subtly is a joy.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Cain gives a verb a different kind of twist here:</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> <i>There’s a raft of poinsettias along the marble-topped Lord’s Supper table, in florist poses around the pulpit, a swath of crimson that <b>aches the eyes</b>, beautifully static, petals crisp as wax paper.</i></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Ache</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> is a common verb (as well as a noun), at least when used intransitively: My head aches. Cain makes it transitive--taking an object,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>eyes</i>--and this small twist adds a bit of poetry to the sentence. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-25518641222372173432011-07-22T14:45:00.000-04:002014-03-07T10:05:24.733-05:00Stunning Sentences<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">I've discovered a little gem of a book that I recommend to any writer working on sentence craft.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Stunning Sentences<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>(Norton, 1999)<i>,</i> one of a series on writing and editing by Bruce Ross-Larson, packs an entire course on style into 100 pages. There's little theory or rule-based grammar here; Ross does what I do--he finds effective sentences and shows what the writer has done to make them work. His examples come from journalism and business, where readers expect not pretty metaphors but hard information and expert opinion efficiently articulated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Writers can probably benefit most by taking small, regular bites from this book. Nine chapters cover broad syntactical techniques for improving sentences--Dramatic Flourishes and Elegant Repetitions, e.g--further broken into specific writing devices. I've admired many of these techniques before, but often with a vague, holistic appreciation; I can't always parse out exactly what a writer is doing that I might be able to add to my bag of tricks. Ross-Larson catalogues, defines, and illustrates rhetorical devices with perfect lucidity. Discussion is brief and concise, and examples abound. Here are a few of my favorites:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Inversion</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">of conventional sentence order "to shift a word or group of words to the emphatic opening slot and to add cadence":<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> <i>Only in the virtual world of her fiction could Austen assert control.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>(Kevin Barry)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Repetition</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">, here of prepositions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> She has an instinctive politician's gift of connecting--<u>to</u><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>women,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><u>to</u><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>men,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><u>to</u><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>old people,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><u>to</u><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>teenagers,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><u>to</u><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>the guy in the <st1:place w:st="on">Staten Island</st1:place> deli who took her order the other weekend after she finished a five-mile run.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">(Eisabeth Bumiller) (And isn't the length of the final prep phrase, after the other short ones, perfect?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Pairs or trios<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">of short sentences:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> <i>Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>(Vladimir Nabokov)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Ross-Larson's work is now part of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.clearwriter.com/">Clearwriter</a>, an online writing and editing service. After briefly sampling one of the online classes, I suggest you save a lot of money the old-fashioned way: just buy this little book on amazon. (OMG. I just called amazon old-fashioned because it sells actual books!) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-80384980414029859512011-07-08T11:18:00.002-04:002011-10-03T22:57:29.254-04:00Revisiting Salinger<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">I picked up</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Franny and Zooey</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> at the library yesterday, just in case I'm not reading enough books right now (the usual half dozen), and hadn't finished the first page when I found this gem: <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[It was] the weekend of the Yale game. Of the twenty-some young men who were waiting at the station for their dates to arrive on the ten-fifty-two, no more than six or seven were out on the cold, open platform. The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, controversial turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries. </i></span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">I could do with fewer numbers here, but isn’t that last sentence wonderful? Doesn’t he just nail the know-it-all twenty-year-old we’ve all been?<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Back with more soon…<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></div>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-71222621062814542662011-06-10T13:50:00.005-04:002011-07-04T13:47:13.744-04:00A Master of Repetition<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">My first encounter with the writing of Gary D. Schmidt has left me awed and a bit envious. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy</i>, he creates a gripping coming-of-age story, a tale of love and injustice that can change the lives of the children who read it. And he does it with enviable artistry, much like <a href="http://insearchofperfectsentence.blogspot.com/2010/06/heroic-storytelling.html">Cat Weatherill</a>, whose work I wrote about earlier. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">For a review of the story, see <a href="http://bookwomanjanreviews.blogspot.com/2011/05/this-is-why-i-keep-reading.html">my book blog</a>. Here I’ll focus on his style. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Schmidt is a master of repetition and the rhythm it creates. I love the way he uses both repetition and variation in this passage. Each successive sentence grows longer as it echoes and expands the one before it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">“Pitch one,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> So he did. The first was too high and fell short. The second was too long and lobbed over her head. But…the third went somewhere in the middle, and Lizzie, Lizzie of the steady eye and firm hand, Lizzie Bright Griffin swung and hit the stone dead center. In fact, every time Turner pitched her a stone within shouting distance, she hit it dead center—no matter how high the arch, no matter how straight the descent.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> Here Schmidt uses a series of three phrases to provide information about a character. The repetition of words and the vivid, concrete language convey in one sentence the work of a lifetime. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">[Turner] took Reverend Griffin’s hand. He wasn’t surprised that it was strong, but he was surprised by how he felt <u>every scar</u> that ridged the man’s palm, <u>every cut</u> drawn through by a quick and sharp pull on a fishline, <u>every slit</u> opened by an accidental knife.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">(I’m reminded of Robert Newton Peck’s advice in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Secrets of Successful Fiction </i>to always show our readers the hands of our characters.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">At one point Turner needs desperately to see Lizzie, and he goes to the edge of the river in hopes of finding her. Through repetition and use of numbers Schmidt captures perfectly the thoughts and actions of a child forced to wait as his hopes diminish. And don’t miss that wonderful metaphor at the end of the paragraph:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">He waited to see if Lizzie might come around the point. He counted waves and told himself that he would leave after twenty-five had tumbled in. After that, he skipped rocks and told himself he would leave after he skipped one seven times. (He did it with the eleventh stone.) After that, he counted fifty gulls—except they came almost all at once. And then, with nothing left to count, Turner climbed back up the ledges, with a pile of loneliness on his back as heavy as nightfall. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Other great rhythmic passages:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">He was almost whistling when he climbed the steps to the front porch. He was whistling for sure when he opened the door and went in. But he wasn’t whistling when he saw his father, who took two quick strides toward him, opened his hand, and slapped it flat and hard against Turner’s face.</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Blue days, as the tide washed away the twin footprints Lizzie and Turner left along the beach. Blue days, as they walked among the sharp-edged mussels, prying open their blue-black shells to tickle their orange tendons. Blue days, as they sprinted against the sea breeze and chased the gulls until Turner finally, finally, finally touched a tail feather. Blue days, as they dangled their legs over the granite ledges and felt the gigantic continent beneath them.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">In the next passage repetition holds together a montage of the main characters:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">It rained all night, and Turner up in Phippsburg and Lizzie down on <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Malaga</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Island</st1:placetype></st1:place> lay in their beds in the deep dark, their arms up behind their heads, listening to the play of the drops on their roofs. The drops played long after Turner and Lizzie had fallen asleep, and they played while Turner’s mother and father lay still and unmoving in the dark, and they played while Lizzie’s granddaddy sat quietly at his door, an unlit pipe in his mouth. They played across the coast all through the night, until the soft new day shrugged itself awake, tried on amethyst and lavender for a while, and finally decided on a pale yellow.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">And did you notice the personification in the last sentence? That’s another favorite technique of Schmidt’s, one he often uses to describe a sea breeze that is Turner’s constant companion, enticing him to choose freedom over convention and presaging his choices and his fortunes. This probably wouldn’t work in an adult book, but here it’s charming:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">The sea breeze, wearing its overcoat, followed him all the way until he closed the door on it. Then it tipped up into the sky and spread out, looking for a maple it could scorch or a beech it could blanch. It found the maple and went about its business, so that if Turner had looked out his front door, he might have seen the maple just past First Congregational shiver some and then coldly begin to burn into reds.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> Finally, in a passage that illustrates the heart of the book, Schmidt unleashes a deluge of vivid, action-filled verbs, often in participial (-ing) form, to make his readers feel the freedom that gives life meaning: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Two of them grabbed Turner’s hands. “Fly with us!” cried one. And they pulled him up and suddenly he was flapping his arms and running down the beach, and Lizzie was flapping hers and running alongside them, together in the midst of the swarm, and calling and calling and running and running, plashing through spent waves, cavorting up the granite ledges, wheeling around stands of pines. And when they were too spent to flap and screech anymore, they collapsed on the point, and Lizzie’s granddaddy waved them to his door. Inside, there was bread and chowder in cracked white bowls, and they all….took the food and sat on the rocks, sun-warmed and briny, and Turner could not tell if it was the scent of the chowder or the sea that filled him, and he knew that he was late again for his own dinner and he did not care. </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-7249250545511928122011-05-03T13:09:00.000-04:002011-05-03T13:09:56.605-04:00Rick Bragg's World of Boys<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">In Rick Bragg's third memoir,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Prince of Frogtown</i>, he returns to the <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alabama</st1:place></st1:state> town of his youth to learn about his father, a legendary drunk who abandoned the family early but was mythologized by the locals. We also learn about Rick’s grandfather and Rick’s own testosterone-laden boyhood, as well as the very different twenty-first century childhood of the stepson he is struggling to relate to. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Listening to the audio version, narrated by Bragg with his, well, hillbilly accent and colorful dialect enhances the vivid writing. I had to get the Kindle version as well so I could grab the great sentences (almost every one). Herewith a few for your enjoyment:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">This was our place. From a running start, I could leap clear across it, heart like a piston, arms flailing for distance, legs like shock absorbers as I finally, finally touched down. This is where I learned to take a punch and not cry, how to dodge a rock, sharpen a knife, cuss, and spit. Here, with decrepit cowboy hats and oil-stained BAMA caps on our burr heads and the gravel of the streambed sifting through our toes, we daydreamed about Corvettes we would drive, wondered if we would all die in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and where that was, and solemnly divined why you should never, ever pee on an electric fence.</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">It took something as powerful as that, as girls, to tug me away from this tribe of sunburned little boys, to scatter us from this place of double-dog dares, Blow Pops, Cherry Bombs, Indian burns, chicken fights, and giggling, half-wit choruses of “Bald-Headed Man from China.” Maybe we should have nailed up a sign—NO GIRLS ALLOWED—and lived out our lives here, to fight mean bulls from the safe side of a barbed-wire fence with a cape cut from a red tank top, and duel to the death with swords sliced off a weeping willow tree. I don’t know what kind of man I turned out to be, but I was good at being a boy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">There would have been hangover in his eyes and in the tremble of his hands around his cigarette, but it wasn’t anything a little taste of liquor wouldn’t heal, once he had shaken free of his wife and kids like a man slipping out of a set of too-tight Sunday clothes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">It was a good world for drunks then, and a bad world for everybody else. A man could rise up in his drunkard’s raiment at night, dripping poison, and pull it off in the day like dirty clothes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">My attention span, in romance, was that of a tick on a hot rock.<span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Bragg’s vivid, grass-roots imagery and poet’s sense of rhythm remind me of Woody Guthrie's<span class="apple-converted-space"> autobiography, </span><i>Bound for Glory.</i> Early in my career teaching high school English, I was ordered to teach literary style to my sixteen-year-olds. It was the first time I had been asked to articulate the principles of style, and I was stymied at first. Somehow I happened to open <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bound for Glory</i>, a book of such stylistic and story-telling power that I immediately ordered it for my classes and had a wonderful time teaching it. Time to go back and enjoy it again.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-8276700709234139782011-04-11T16:32:00.010-04:002011-04-18T16:03:29.912-04:00Images of life and death<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Thanks to Ken Ledford for sending this gorgeous opening passage from<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The God Of Small Things</i> by Arundhati Roy:<br />
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"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun."</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">We start with a macro view that sets the time, place, weather, and mood. Then <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Roy</st1:place></st1:city>'s camera zooms in on specific images: crows gorging, "dustgreen" trees, overripe fruit, flies drunk on the abundant life--and then, abruptly, dead. I love the assonance of "dissol<b>u</b>te bl<b>u</b>ebottles" "f<b>a</b>tly b<b>a</b>ffled" and the echo of "stun" and "sun." And I like the way <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Roy</st1:place></st1:city> varies her sentence length--some are snapshots, some movie scenes. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">I listened to the audio version of this book when it came out, and I had trouble following it. The more poetic a writer's style is, the more I need to see it with my eyes. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</span></div>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-67133584912886329952011-04-05T11:29:00.007-04:002014-08-31T19:08:46.630-04:00Sunset, Moonrise<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">nyone who has read Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, or even just seen the movie, will remember the scene where Lila Wingo first shows her children the simultaneous sunset and moonrise over the marshes. Conroy is sometimes guilty of overwriting, but here I think his language is as breathtaking as the natural beauty he captures.<br />
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"The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendent, the depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks. The moon then rose quickly, rose like a bird from the water, from the trees, from the islands, and climbed straight up—gold, then yellow, then pale yellow, pale silver, silver-bright, then something miraculous, immaculate, and beyond silver, a color native only to southern nights." <br />
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The first sentence balances parallel phrases in imitation of the sun and moon, then moves through layers of description that mirror the sun's descent. In the second sentence, the cadence of "from" phrases and gradations of color lift us up with the moonrise. Every time I read this I feel I have witnessed two miracles: one of nature, the other of art.</span>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-7682898436558173842011-03-28T12:30:00.001-04:002011-04-13T13:43:49.565-04:00When you just can't stop reading<div class="MsoNormal">From the opening of Mark Richard's <i>House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> "</o:p>SAY YOU HAVE A 'SPECIAL CHILD,' which in the South means one between Down’s and dyslexic. Birth him with his father away on Army maneuvers along <st1:place w:st="on">East Texas</st1:place> bayous. Give him his only visitor in the military hospital his father’s father, a sometime railroad man, sometime hired gun for Huey Long with a Louisiana Special Police badge. Take the infant to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Kansas</st1:state></st1:place>, in winter, where the only visitor is a Chinese peeping tom, little yellow face in the windows during the cold nights. Further frighten the mother, age twenty, with the child’s convulsions. . . . Move the family to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Kirbyville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Texas</st1:state></st1:place>, where the father cruises timber in the big woods. Fill the back porch with things the father brings home: raccoons, lost bird dogs, stacks of saws, and machetes. Give the child a sandbox to play in, in which scorpions build nests. Let the mother cut the grass and run over rattlesnakes, shredding them all over the yard. Make the mother cry and miss her mother."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It had been a long time since I'd read a book in a single day, but Richard's (pronounced <i>Ri-SHARD</i>)<i> </i>memoir grabbed me and refused to let go. It's beautifully written in many ways, but what gives it its narrative power is the unusual use of second person. Instead of <i>I</i>, Richard uses <i>you</i>, a risky choice made famous by Jay McInerney in <i>Bright Lights, Big City</i>. In the paragraph above, he turns the opening into a cadenced set of orders, almost military in tone. Though not literally directed at the readers, they nevertheless compel our attention.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Most of the narration isn't in the imperative mode, but the hypnotic effect of the repeated <i>you</i> is always present:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal">"You are lost at sea in New York City, headphones on, Bible tract in your back pocket, the seafaring novel roaring in your head, the heaving concrete, headlong black foaming ocean, a pitched deck where men hold on for life in the shadows, a Master somewhere on the upper deck, unseen but seeing, seeing you, no urgency, no destination, no end to the night, you sail under reefed sail, a stranger pulls you by your collar from stepping in front of an express bus on Fifty-seventh Street."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This sentence, with its piled-up, rhythmic phrases and its stream-of-conscious immediacy, doesn't need second person to be powerful. It would work well with the more conventional <i>I</i> or <i>he</i>. But all those <i>you's</i> reach out for us. We become the subject of the story. And when you're watching a life you never knew you had unfold on the pages you hold in your hands, you find it hard to walk away.</div>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-73137005197150086962011-03-28T11:18:00.000-04:002011-03-28T11:18:06.426-04:00The power of three, not to mention the bdelygmiaI've been meaning to look closely at the language of Barack Obama's speeches. Richard Nordquist beat me to it in his ever-fascinating <a href="http://grammar.about.com/od/essaysonstyle/a/Barack-Obamas-Victory-Speech-And-The-Magic-Number-Three.htm?nl=1">About.com column</a> on all things linguistic. In his analysis of Obama's rhetoric, he focuses on the President's use of <b>tricolons</b>--series of three items.<br />
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Don't visit Nordquist's site unless you have hours to take delight in his collection of rhetorical devices (unpronounceable Greek names like <i><a href="http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/BdelygmiaRant07.htm?nl=1">bdelygmia</a></i> offered at no charge), examples of great writing from the classical to the contemporary (the metaphors of Dr. Gregory House, for example), practical advice, and humor.Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-88495473019412752122011-03-14T23:00:00.003-04:002011-03-14T23:29:47.166-04:00In the tribe of the sentence watchers<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">"</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">Some people are bird watchers, others are celebrity watchers; still others are flora and fauna watchers. I belong to the tribe of sentence watchers. Some appreciate fine art; others appreciate fine wines. I appreciate fine sentences. I am always on the lookout for sentences that take your breath away, for sentences that make you say, 'Isn’t that something?' or 'What a sentence!'” </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">"Alone a word is just a word, a part of speech clustered in a category; it looks over at other words it would like to have a relationship with (it’s almost a dating situation) but has no way of connecting with them. And then a verb shows up, providing a way of linking up noun to adjective, and suddenly you have a sentence, a proposition, a little world. 'Beautiful Joan sighed.' 'John was angry.' 'I am proud.' 'Crucial decisions await'."</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">from <i>How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One</i> by <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city u2:st="on"><st1:place u2:st="on"><st1:place u3:st="on"><st1:city u3:st="on">Stanley</st1:city></st1:place></st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city> Fish</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">Go<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/01/26/best-sentence-ever/">here</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>for<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Entertainment Weekly </i>reader ideas of great sentences. It's a motley collection, punctuated by the kind of outraged comments I stopped teaching eighth grade to get away from. But there are a few sentences worth reading.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">A better collection is</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://www.shmoop.com/news/2010/07/13/best-opening-lines-literature/">here</a>. Number 8 gets my vote, maybe because I hadn't heard it before.</span></span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div></div>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-47936021346369010522011-03-14T14:49:00.002-04:002011-03-14T14:53:10.588-04:00Dash away, all!Back when I wrote twenty-page letters on lilac-scented stationery—yes, I’m that old—a friend pointed out that I used more dashes than periods. Dashes still pepper my informal writing—see the previous sentence—oops, I can’t stop!--because they enable us to capture the irregular ebb and flow of ordinary conversation with all its starts and stops and interruptions and about-faces.<br />
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Dickens knew this when he gave Esther Summerson her voice in Bleak House: “It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other birthdays—none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one another—there were none on mine.” If Dickens were writing today, he’d probably use but’s or periods instead, but I like the dashes—they highlight the contrast between the other girls’ lives and Esther’s. She continues to define herself by what she is not, set off by dashes: “I was brought up, from my earliest remembrances—like some of the princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming—by my godmother.”<br />
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Contemporary novelist David Mitchell uses dashes to add urgency to the opening scene of <em>The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet</em>, a chilling and graphic depiction of a childbirth gone wrong: <br />
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“She’s barely spoken”—the maid holds the lamp—“for hours and hours....”<br />
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“What you say”—the honest doctor wavers—“may well be true.” <br />
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“If you can discover that without cutting the arm”—Maeno means “amputate”—“do so.”<br />
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By using dashes to set off the speaker’s actions within the dialogue, Mitchell eliminates the need for “said” and packs the terse sentences with information.<br />
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Finally, the dash can be used to throw a spotlight on a phrase the author wants us to stop and think twice about:<br />
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"I prefer to think of the long-term future of AI as a kind of purgatory: a place where the flawed but good-hearted go to be purified—and tested—and come out better on the other side." (from "Mind vs. Machine" by Brian Christian, <em>The Atlantic</em>, March 2011)<br />
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By the way, a dash is NOT a hyphen, though it is typed as two hyphens, which most software changes to a real dash. Hyphens join words like "long-term"; dashes emphasize the break between them.Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-23134200268210771912011-03-02T22:30:00.002-05:002011-03-14T11:12:09.356-04:00When the words just won't come out of your mouth"Metaphor conditions our interpretations of the stock market and, through advertising, it surreptitiously infiltrates our purchasing decisions." <br />
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This sentence from James Geary's <em>I is an Other</em>, an exploration of metaphor, stopped me cold, but not because it was beautiful. The writing had been smooth until I got here, but suddenly I felt as if I'd stepped off a paved road into knee-deep mud. I looked back at the sentence to see why. <br />
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It wasn't that I had trouble understanding the meaning, but rather that the words, even when read silently, did not want to come out of my mouth. Too many long words? Too many <em>s</em> sounds? Three repetitions of the unlovely syllable "tions" followed by a "tious''? For all of the above, this sentence failed the read-aloud test for me--a test all good writing must pass. Every piece of writing has a unique voice, one we hear even when we're reading silently.<br />
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I'm happy to report that the clunky sentence wasn't typical of Geary's style, which is mostly clear and fluid and sometimes rises above the quotidian. Isn't that a great word? "Metaphor," says Geary, "slips a pin into the quotidian." Here I like the contrast of short, simple words--no modifiers--with the four-syllable Latinate <em>quotidian.</em> The subtle assonance of the short-i sound (sl<u>i</u>ps, <u>i</u>nto, quot<u>i</u>dian) adds some music.<em> </em>The pin, as Geary explained in the previous sentence, stands for a prick of sensation. He goes on: "By mixing the foreign with the familiar, the marvelous with the mundane, metaphor makes the world sting and tingle." Three pairs of well-chosen words (<em>foreign </em>and<em> familiar, marvelous</em> and <em>mundane, sting </em>and<em> tingle)</em> use sound effects to make their point beautifully. All is forgiven.Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-50596981983161390722011-02-15T15:08:00.000-05:002011-02-15T15:08:47.952-05:00How NOT to write a sentenceThis spoof of the style of one of my least favorite political figures (go ahead, guess!) arrived on a birthday card:<br />
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"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!"<br />
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For entertainment value, sometimes bad writing is the best writing!Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-71764717502584658982011-02-11T14:55:00.001-05:002011-02-11T14:59:05.744-05:00Sentence Structure that Reinforces MeaningIf the upcoming "Jeopardy" match between humans and a computer named Watson is on your calendar, you might also enjoy Brian Christian’s article <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/mind-vs-machine/8386/">“Mind vs. Machine”</a> in the March issue of <em>The Atlantic</em>. Here’s a sentence of his that’s not only thought-provoking but also a pleasure to read: <br />
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“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.”<br />
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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:<br />
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• “the story of…, the story of”<br />
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• “drawing and redrawing”<br />
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• “beast and machine” (with assonance)<br />
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• “meat and math” (with alliteration)<br />
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• the final two parallel phrases, each a participle followed by a prep phrase with a compound object.<br />
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Christian’s skillful sentence construction eloquently reinforces his meaning without calling attention to itself. Bravo!Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-44042535894725548772011-02-07T15:49:00.001-05:002011-02-07T15:50:09.324-05:00A beautiful style laughing at itselfIf 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 <em>not</em> literary, what is it? <br />
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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. <br />
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Literary technique can, of course, be abused. The annual Bad Writing Contest (<a href="http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2010.htm">http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2010.htm</a>) 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 <em>The Pig Did It,</em> in which<em> </em>a pompous but lovelorn writing teacher (of course) has come to Ireland to grieve:<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">“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.”</div><br />
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.<br />
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For more on <em>The Pig Did It,</em> including another great passage, go to: <a href="http://bookwomanjanreviews.blogspot.com/2011/01/pig-did-it-by-joseph-caldwell.html">http://bookwomanjanreviews.blogspot.com/2011/01/pig-did-it-by-joseph-caldwell.html</a>Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-36905077141784616442011-01-12T12:56:00.001-05:002011-01-19T16:34:28.382-05:00Great Writers Make It Look So EasyMy friend John Bruns is a retired engineer who is only now finding his true calling as a writer. It’s a joy to witness his excitement and exuberance as he creates an ever-expanding cast of characters for the novel he is writing. John has a way of tossing words onto a page without apparent effort, and then using them to produce sentences both understated and brilliant. I love his opening passage: <br />
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“Into the warren of cubicles at the Pasadena Messenger, into the monkey house of telephones and keyboards and aggravated people wanders Cap Riley, who has worked there seven years but still seems a little lost. He matches his cubicle, or perhaps his cubicle matches him: disheveled, coffee-stained, a step or two slower than the prevailing pace of things. A round, bearded man, he is twenty pounds overweight, going gray, eyes mild and heavy-lidded behind steel-rimmed glasses. Cap's cubicle is also overweight….”<br />
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John’s writing style never shouts; it maintains the same even, temperate tone as his voice does. So it’s easy to miss the things he does to make his sentences more interesting. Inverting normal word order, for one. Instead of the usual who-what-where opener, John starts with a pile of prep phrases that tell us quickly where we are and what it’s like there. Into the middle of the scene, and the sentence, comes our non-hero, Cap Riley. The placement of the verb “wanders” before the subject tells us that Cap is reluctant to enter even before we read that he’s “lost.”<br />
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In the second sentence, John evokes a smile by using a type of repetition the Greeks called a <em>chiasmus</em>: echoing a phrase with its opposite: "He matches his cubicle, or perhaps his cubicle matches him." The descriptors that follow go from a single word, “disheveled,” to two to a dozen, a pattern that gets our attention and moves us forward. The third sentence opens with an appositive phrase, “a round, bearded man,” rather then the less interesting “he is” that many writers would have started with. <br />
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John’s varied sentence structure provides the scaffolding for the words he uses to draw the picture of Cap Riley and his office. Every word contributes to the effect. I can find a “say-nothing” word to cut in almost every sentence I read (except possibly my own, not for lack of need), but in this paragraph I find none. It’s a deceptively ordinary piece of writing that turns out to be perfect.<br />
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Was the writing as easy as he makes it look? Not exactly, says John. "I revise a lot, but a lot of it is unconscious. As you learn to write, you hear the music."Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-57366590862275015282011-01-12T11:55:00.001-05:002011-01-12T12:56:49.497-05:00John Grisham: Style and SubstanceRay Wilkerson, a student in one of my "In Search of" classes, sent this sentence from John Grisham's latest novel, <em>The Confession</em>:<br />
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"Sunday. What had been probable on Thursday, even likelier on Friday, and virtually certain on Saturday became the numbing truth during the night, so that on Sunday morning the country awoke to the sensational reality that an innocent man had been executed."<br />
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Ray's comment: "Grisham is known for his simplicity in writing style and his storytelling abilities. These two sentences are vintage Grisham. The first one-word sentence, 'Sunday,' tells the reader exactly what point in time it is. There is no ambiguity. The next sentence simply, thoroughly and powerfully brings the reader all the way through the events of the past three days, from speculation to absolute. All of the different clashes of storylines and characters have culminated and collided at this point with this result - an innocent young man was executed for a crime he had not committed."<br />
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Thanks, Ray, for such a good example of a straightforward style that delivers its content so effectively.Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-76186747931649631262011-01-11T12:28:00.001-05:002011-01-12T12:04:58.308-05:00He says potato, I say potahtoMy husband, reading <a href="http://www.mensjournal.com/alone-across-greenland">an article in <em>Men's Journal</em></a> about trekking across Greenland, asked what I thought of these sentences:<br />
"There is undeniable poetry in the violent and chaotic expression of nature's forces. The drift galloping over the ice resonates of Valkyries from a wild avant-garde ballet. Backlit by the sun's low rays, the sheet of liquid smoke glows like a cloudscape time-lapse photograph. And what could be seen as a frigid and threatening environment turns into an ethereal dance: delicate, evocative, and graceful."<br />
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Individual phrases caught my ear. I liked the liquid smoke image, I told him, and the word cloudscape, and the ethereal dance. Maybe not the Valkyries. What did he think? "I lost the story in the words," he said. "I wanted to know what happened to the trekkers, and all that description got in my way."<br />
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When I looked closely at the passage, I had to agree that it was overdone. The landscape is a ballet, a photograph, and, again, a dance. Modifiers trip over each other: "cloudscape time-lapse photograph" is hard enough to say (too many accented syllables), harder to process quickly since words that are usually nouns turn out to be used here as adjectives. And the word "resonate" should, in my humble opinion, be retired; it must be exhausted from overuse. Editing this passage would bring out its beauty. As St. Exupery said, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."<br />
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But the bigger point I want to make here is the widely varying preferences of readers. What strikes me as poetic, worth a second read, strikes Ray as obfuscation. Most people read for only content; they want to know what happens next, period. Some, like Ray, will occasionally appreciate a well crafted sentence, but it's not what they need or look for. For a few, like me, a memorable style (of which there are innumerable types, not just poetic, of course) is the <em>sine qua non</em> of the books we call great. You say potato, I say potahto. Aren't we lucky to have books for every kind of taste?Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-83223887290831549032011-01-07T12:10:00.001-05:002011-01-12T12:57:56.944-05:00"The English Language Knocking Your Socks Off"“Agatha Christie mysteries we read for their plots, Sherlock Holmes stories we return to for their gaslight and hansom-cab coziness, but the very best writers we love for the sound of their sentences, the shiver of pleasure delivered by unexpected words and astonishing turns of phrase, by the way their language makes us feel glad to be alive. You don't pick up James Joyce's "Ulysses" because you want to learn about the events in Dublin on June 16, 1904; you don't read Hunter S. Thompson because you want to find out about the nightlife in Las Vegas. What Joyce and Thompson offer is simply the glorious experience of the English language knocking your socks off.”<br />
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Michael Dirda, "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122205896.html">A master from Mississippi</a>," <em>The Washington Post</em>, 12/23/10Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-44286478052421313132010-09-26T16:42:00.001-04:002011-01-12T12:58:44.199-05:00Travel Writing that Lives up to its SubjectWhen I bought a travel guide for our trip to Yellowstone, I was looking for clear and useful information. I didn't expect to find sentences that would evoke the same kind of awe I felt gazing at hundreds of bison scattered across a vast valley in the Wyoming sunset.<br />
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Brian Kevin, author of Fodor's <em>Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks (2009), </em>surprised me with the beauty and elegance of his language:<br />
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"A bull elk strides like a general across the lawn of the former cavalry barracks, his bugle call echoing the reveille that once proclaimed sunrise and sunset at Fort Yellowstone. His harem grazes silently among stately stone buildings, where the ghosts of soldiers and settlers mingle with wide-eyed park visitors and rangers directing traffic. " With his lovely imagery, strong verbs, and sound effects, he captures perfectly the intersection of nature at its most majestic with humans who sometimes threaten to overrun it. <br />
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If you've visited the hot springs at Mammoth, you'll appreciate his description of the landscape as "somewhere between an ice palace and an ashtray."<br />
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Don't let a little poetry keep you from looking for Kevin's guide books--this one was the most useful of the half dozen we carried. And the photos by Jeff Vanuga are gorgeous.Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-71836366974323288192010-08-18T14:56:00.001-04:002010-08-18T14:58:37.573-04:00The Eloquence of Toni MorrisonReading Toni Morrison's <i>Beloved</i> is like trying to make your way through a maze. Just when you think you see the way out, you're staring at impenetrable hedge again, feeling puzzled, even maddened. Morrison jumps around in time, offers incomplete tidbits of a scene or memory she'll return to later, and eschews logic for poetry. But her truths are essential, her stories haunting, and her sentences often worth holding up to the light. <br />
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Here’s how Morrison describes Stamp Paid, a former slave who worked for the Underground Railroad:<br />
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"...sneaking was his job—his life; though always for a clear and holy purpose. Before the War all he did was sneak: runaways into hidden places, secret information to public places. Underneath his legal vegetables were the contraband humans that he ferried across the river. Even the pigs he worked in the spring served his purposes. Whole families lived on the bones and guts he distributed to them. He wrote letters and read to them the ones they received. He knew who had dropsy and who needed stovewood; which children had a gift and which needed correction. He knew the secrets of the Ohio River and its banks; empty houses and full; the best dancers, the worst speakers, those with beautiful voices and those who could not carry a tune."<br />
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I love the cadence of this passage, established by its many pairs of words joined by <i>and</i>: wrote and read; empty and full; best and worst. Morrison varies the syntax of the pairs, using adjectives ("empty houses and full"--love that unconventional placement of the second adjective); clauses ("who had dropsy and who needed stovewood"); and modified nouns ("contraband humans" under "legal vegetables"). The many opposites echo the escaped slaves' vision of the world as having only two kinds of people, "whitepeople" and "blackpeople." Only one race was human. <br />
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Here's another passage that jumped off the page for me:<br />
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"Deeper and more painful than his belated concern for Denver or Sethe, scorching his soul like a silver dollar in a fool’s pocket, was the memory of Baby Suggs—the mountain to his sky. It was the memory of her and the honor that was her due that made him walk straight-necked into the yard of 124, although he heard its [ghosts’] voices from the road."<br />
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I love the alliterative <i>s</i>'s, the silver-dollar simile that elevates a common cliche into poetry, and the mountain-sky metaphor that lets us know exactly how the man felt about Baby Suggs.<br />
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Finally, two passages that need no analysis:<br />
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"[The voices] had become an occasional mutter—like the interior sounds a woman makes when she believes she is alone and unobserved at her work: a <i>sth</i> when she misses the needle’s eye; a soft moan when she sees another chip in her one good platter; the low, friendly argument with which she greets the hens. Nothing fierce or startling. Just that eternal, private conversation that takes place between women and their tasks."<br />
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"From the night-sky they ice-skated under a star-loaded sky and drank sweet milk by the stove, to the string puzzles Sethe did for them in afternoon light, and shadow pictures in the gloaming."Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-73457231386270361262010-06-01T11:52:00.001-04:002013-09-20T05:02:32.818-04:00Heroic StorytellingLast month I was asked to lead a workshop on style in children's writing. It had been awhile since I wrote for children or read their books, so I assigned myself time in libraries and bookstores pulling kids' books off the shelves and scanning their pages at random for beautiful writing. Immersed in the magical world of kidlit, I felt like the ten-year-old I used to be, the one who read ten books a week during the lazy, unscheduled summers of childhood. <br />
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One of the books I plucked off the shelf simply because of its lovely title was <em>Snowbone, </em>a heroic fantasy by British writer and storyteller Cat Weatherill. Her energetic writing demonstrates the power of simple but vivid verbs to bring a story to life so well that modifiers become unnecessary. Here's an example describing a fire that has broken out on the deck of a pirate ship:<br />
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"It spat and clawed like a flaming tomcat. It pounced on the shattered crates. Mauled the decking. Snapped the bones of the ship. It hissed and growled. Whipped an angry, fiery tail till the hold fizzed with sparks. Then it crept forward on its belly and started licking at the remaining crates."<br />
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Weatherill can also wax poetic, as in this passage, where assonance, alliteration, repetition, rhythm, similes, and word order turn prose into music. Nothing "prosaic" here:<br />
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"Over the waves, under the moon, into the east he [flew]. Over sailing ships that snailed across the ocean, leaving their trails behind them, silver as starlight. Over islands, secret-sleeping, scattered like cushions on the wakeful waves. Over sage whales, barnacle blue, singing sea songs older than time."<br />
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I love the use of "snail" as a verb; it makes the metaphor more subtle than it might have been ("they looked like snails"). And that wonderful compound "secret-sleeping"--like a kenning from Beowulf.Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8891424754018681902.post-25283730685300168042010-05-15T18:01:00.001-04:002010-06-12T18:02:54.115-04:00Harnessing the Power of NamesIn fiction, well-chosen names can hook the reader's interest, telegraph information, and set a tone--all in a capitalized word or two. No one names her people and places with more skill and humor than J.K.Rowling. Her hero and his allies are ordinary people with ordinary names: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger. (Yes, Hermione’s a complicated name, at least for American readers, but then Hermione’s a complicated girl!) <br />
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Contrast the names of the hopelessly incompetent: Cornelius Fudge, as effective at fighting evil as a piece of soft candy. Dudley, Petunia, and Vernon Dursley--I don't know why certain words just sound stupid, but Dursley is surely one of them! They live in Little Whinging (that's a soft <em>g</em>, from <em>whinge</em>, Britspeak for complain). Nearly Headless Nick, who couldn't even manage to lose his entire head. <br />
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Rowling often uses names to suggest evil or danger, sometimes deliberating misleading us to create suspense. Lord Voldemort, The Name That Must Not Be Said, means "flight of death" in French, though you don't have to know French to recognize the suggestion of death. Severus Snape of Slytherin positively hisses. The Dementors threaten insanity. Draco Malfoy's name, with its hard consonants and its every syllable accented, sounds like the curses he hurls, while his flunkies, Crabbe and Goyle, are merely pests. Bellatrix is a beautiful but diabolical woman (“bella” can mean “beautiful” or “warlike”—or in this case, both) who is always threatening “trix”). Lupin's name suggests "lupus," Latin for wolf. <br />
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<a name='more'></a>On the lighter side, Professor Sprout teaches herbology, and Professor Flitwick teaches charms. Rita Skeeter is as pesky as a mosquito. Gilderoy Lockhart bears a marquee name, perfect for the diva he is. <br />
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I especially love the names that mimic traditional English places, like The Leaky Cauldron Pub and Flourish and Blots stationers; the puns, like Diagon Alley, and the parodies of two-part academic titles, some with double entendres like <em>Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul</em>. <br />
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Cat Weatherill, another British writer for children, also tells us something about her characters through their poetic names. Barkbelly is a wooden boy; Snowbone his friend who often protects herself with aloofness. Moontar is a sailor on a flying ship (“tar” is a nautical term for sailor). In Pumbleditch, a rural town where life is simple, the boys have names like Moth, Dipper, Log, Fish, Brick, and Sock. The girls are Candy Pie, Sweet Pea, and Freckle. But special characters have special names: The lovely high-wire circus artist who hypnotizes her audience is named Gossamer, and the master of the circus is the exotic Carmenero.<br />
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But my favorite laugh-out-loud names comes from a picture book about a family not unlike The Munsters. In Patricia Polacco’s <em>The Graves Family</em>, Mom is named Shalleaux Graves. <br />
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Children's writers are lucky to have an audience that can still appreciate playfulness with names. But even in adult writing, the more subtle connotations of names, or just their sounds, can be useful: think Scarlett O'Hara, Steven Daedalus, Holden Caulfield, Scout Finch (= to hunt for a bird), Huckleberry Finn, Lolita, Garp. Sometimes a character by any other name would not be the same character. <br />
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Even unimportant names--of items, streets, songs, food, books--can add interesting flecks to the fabric we weave as we write a story or elucidate a point. In his essay "Trickster in a Suit of Lights," Michael Chabon, one of our most brilliant contemporary writers, drops names like casually scattered jewels along the path of his sentences: <br />
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"Entertainment has a bad name....It gives off a whiff of Coppertone and dripping Creamsicle, the fake-butter miasma of a movie-house lobby, of karaoke and Jagermeister, Jerry Bruckheimer movies, a <em>Street Fighter</em> machine grunting solipsistically in the corner of an ice-rink arcade." Chabon could certainly have been more succinct--"Entertainment is just cheap thrills"--but it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting or evocative. See <a href="http://insearchofperfectsentence.blogspot.com/2010/02/look-up-in-sky.html">below</a> for an example from fiction.Janhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02733188992195894841noreply@blogger.com0