Freud writes with a masterful degree of specificity. However much he deals with vague abstractions, he never fails at communicating meaning. He uses many previously-described techniques in his essay: references and quotes to establish breadth of knowledge and intellectual achievement, hypotactic sentences to keep one idea flowing into the next, and periodic style in order to maintain authority.
Freud moves “The Uncanny” from a long, long discussion of etymology and translation to ways the uncanny appears in different forms of expression. It is a shame that Freud predates work on robotics, because the notion of the uncanny, (most famously in the phrase, “the uncanny valley”) has become even more pertinent in this century.
My interest was caught when he talked about the uncanny in fiction, towards the end of the piece. “... it is a much more fertile province than the uncanny in real life, for it contains the whole of the latter and something more besides, something that cannot be found in real life.” His use of the word “something,” a very vague word in this context, implies an essence, a challenge to verbalize, and this captures the reader’s interest at the beginning of a new idea in his essay. He goes on to talk about the “realm of phantasy,” (“realm,” a phantastical word that goes along with “kingdom” and “magic”) and how fiction is not “submitted to reality-testing.” (Note the scientific note just here, later in the same sentence in which “realm” appeared)
Then follows a sentence with a surprising qualifer at the beginning, and then a parallel form that is an earmark of high style. “The somewhat paradoxical result is that in the first place a great deal that is not uncanny in fiction would be so if it happened in real life; and in the second place that there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life.” “Somewhat” seems out of place, except when seen in the light of the following, “paradoxical.” Freud is constantly reaffirming how smart he is, so for something to be paradoxical would put him in the position of being confused. “Somewhat paradoxical” gives the impression that while it is paradoxical, he can still understand.
The parallel structure of that sentence, “first place/second place,” “uncanny/fiction” and “real life” being surrounded by different constructions that substantially alter the meaning while keeping the wording order intact, these strategies make him sound clever as well as smart.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
11/23 - Douglass
High, middle, and low all are utilized in turn to create the highly manipulative effect that Fredrick Douglass is going for. The first sentence, “I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years,” is the low beginning of a story-teller in a rocking chair, contrasting with his ecstatic hypotaxis as he talks about reading an essay by Sheridan. He varies his diction, using words like, “commenced,” instead of, “began,” and repeating words here and there, perhaps so as not to seem too educated to a largely white audience. (While his audience’s members probably believed in abolition, they were usually skittish about what would happen if it were successful.) He says he “succeeded” at learning to read and write, which immediately connotes pride in accomplishment. That would not be communicated by the word “learned,” with its connotations of having been taught. Douglass describes having to sneak and con his way into a relationship with the written word, often fearing peril.
When Douglass writes, he uses multiple descriptors, often intensifying the description with the second. “...in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband...” The stakes are raised as “direction” follows “advice” in the description of the husband’s behavior. It creates the impression that at first he only advised her, but then had to direct her, furthering the portrayal of Mistress Hugh as someone being warped by having a slave. “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” (There are references to religious imagery and William Blake’s poem, “Tiger,” but that’s another story.) Douglass suddenly turns the lyricism of his earlier description of Mistress Hugh against her, with slavery as the cause.
When Douglass writes, he uses multiple descriptors, often intensifying the description with the second. “...in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband...” The stakes are raised as “direction” follows “advice” in the description of the husband’s behavior. It creates the impression that at first he only advised her, but then had to direct her, furthering the portrayal of Mistress Hugh as someone being warped by having a slave. “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” (There are references to religious imagery and William Blake’s poem, “Tiger,” but that’s another story.) Douglass suddenly turns the lyricism of his earlier description of Mistress Hugh against her, with slavery as the cause.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
11/18 - Conrad
“On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.” (109)
If Conrad’s desire is to make me see before all, then he has sufficiently exercised his power in “The Secret Sharer.” From the moment of confusion at the beginning, as I wondered whether the fishing-stakes were the lines on the palm of his right hand, to the feeling of loss I experience along with the narrator as his “comfort of quiet communion” with his ship (note the alliteration) as other “disturbing” sounds are heard, dragging him from reverie into narrative. (110) I did not want to go anywhere. Seeing what the narrator saw, I was as loath to leave it as he.
The description manages to be journalistic and lyrical all at once. From it, one could take a pencil and draw what he is seeing in the opening, but in the moment of reading, a complex feeling is transmitted as well. The language is sensuous, that is, of the senses. The narrator is describing what he saw and experienced then. The opening to “The Secret Sharer” is neither a geographical textbook nor a pamphlet about running a ship. From the first person, past tense point of view, the narrator provides information because he is remembering, not instructing. It does not seem that a reader is necessary at all, because of how reflective the piece is.
The repetition of sibilant “s” sounds and their alveolar counterparts echoes the title of the story. The sounds in “The Secret Sharer” repeat themselves constantly, in internal alliteration as well as homonym spellings. “Division,” “ocean,” and “crazy” are only three examples of words that, with other spellings, echo the major sounds in the story’s title. The recurrence of these sounds is also a natural echoing of water as it laps on the banks of a river, or the sides of a ship. Conrad’s use of sonic cues creates a mood that is continued even when the narrator’s reverie is disrupted and more characters are introduced.
“She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her - and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.” (110)
Note the continued used of sibilant and alveolar sounds. Note also the touches of alliteration removed from the major sonic theme. “Flung far,” “setting sun,” “canoe... cloud.” In the first passage, there was also, “division... domain,” “fences... fishes,” and “human habitation.” (109) There are parallels between the things the narrator notices as a lack. “Nothing moved, nothing lived,” as if living is synonymous with movement, when the narrator himself is standing on the ship’s deck, and the ship, “She,” and he are both definitely alive, but both unmoving only for the moment.
If Conrad’s desire is to make me see before all, then he has sufficiently exercised his power in “The Secret Sharer.” From the moment of confusion at the beginning, as I wondered whether the fishing-stakes were the lines on the palm of his right hand, to the feeling of loss I experience along with the narrator as his “comfort of quiet communion” with his ship (note the alliteration) as other “disturbing” sounds are heard, dragging him from reverie into narrative. (110) I did not want to go anywhere. Seeing what the narrator saw, I was as loath to leave it as he.
The description manages to be journalistic and lyrical all at once. From it, one could take a pencil and draw what he is seeing in the opening, but in the moment of reading, a complex feeling is transmitted as well. The language is sensuous, that is, of the senses. The narrator is describing what he saw and experienced then. The opening to “The Secret Sharer” is neither a geographical textbook nor a pamphlet about running a ship. From the first person, past tense point of view, the narrator provides information because he is remembering, not instructing. It does not seem that a reader is necessary at all, because of how reflective the piece is.
The repetition of sibilant “s” sounds and their alveolar counterparts echoes the title of the story. The sounds in “The Secret Sharer” repeat themselves constantly, in internal alliteration as well as homonym spellings. “Division,” “ocean,” and “crazy” are only three examples of words that, with other spellings, echo the major sounds in the story’s title. The recurrence of these sounds is also a natural echoing of water as it laps on the banks of a river, or the sides of a ship. Conrad’s use of sonic cues creates a mood that is continued even when the narrator’s reverie is disrupted and more characters are introduced.
“She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her - and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.” (110)
Note the continued used of sibilant and alveolar sounds. Note also the touches of alliteration removed from the major sonic theme. “Flung far,” “setting sun,” “canoe... cloud.” In the first passage, there was also, “division... domain,” “fences... fishes,” and “human habitation.” (109) There are parallels between the things the narrator notices as a lack. “Nothing moved, nothing lived,” as if living is synonymous with movement, when the narrator himself is standing on the ship’s deck, and the ship, “She,” and he are both definitely alive, but both unmoving only for the moment.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
11/11 - Holmes vs. Steyn
Holmes and Steyn write in unsurprising ways for their subject matter. The tactics they use are obvious, and examination of these may show that their methods break down by political stance. But for the moment, that is out of the department.
Holmes is ostensibly writing a review of two nonfiction books. He begins the review by introducing one of the authors, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in detail. He uses her biography to highlight key moments in his article, giving her arguments emotional potency. Perhaps this is a reflection of the tactics Hirsi Ali uses in her book, but in either case, Holmes puts her, and to a lesser extent Ian Buruma, in the foreground.
He disappears almost entirely from the article. “Hirsi Ali argues...” “In Hirsi Ali’s view...” “Hirsi Ali urges...” “Buruma remarks...” “Buruma argues...” “Buruma describes...” These links are the ways that Holmes moves from one part of his examination of the issues to another. He mixes hypotaxis and parataxis. His sentences are long, as he usually needs one of the above framing clauses to begin an idea. Since very little of what he writes is framed as coming from him, he has to orient every statement from one of the two reviewees, to the reading public. He acts as conduit.
He hardly appears at all except for a few remarks at the end of the review, in a studied show of impartiality. “One comes away from these two remarkable books suspecting that neither compromise nor confrontation will do much to avert the coming train crash between a resentful minority of indigenous Europeans and a potentially violent minority of young men among the millions of Muslims now permanently residing in Europe.” And again, with, “One might even argue that, in today’s Europe, the Enlightenment ideal of universal citizenship is already dead.” That “One” can really only be one man in his review, since he quotes and names almost everyone else who has a voice in it. Holmes comes in at the very end to sum up, and insert a point of view that seems unforgivably wishy-washy, given the highly emotional problems the books he has been reviewing holds.
He does not “review” as much as sum up, quoting the authors and putting them in conversation with each other. He attempts neutrality, but it is clear from the amount of time he spends on Hirsi Ali’s biography that at least his emotional, if not political sensibility, is clearly in her corner.
Holmes poses questions central to the issues, and then uses quotes and the personified points of view of the authors to answer them, setting them up in conversation with eahc other. If it were not for the titles at the beginning of the review, it would be hard to tell that he was writing about two separate books.
Other writers get into the act, too. Oliver Roy, Fortuyn, and Baruch Spinoza all make appearances while Holmes is elucidating Buruma’s point of view. It may be that Buruma makes a point of mentioning/quoting those figures in his own book, but by using them in the review, Holmes subtly weakens Buruma’s stance. He does this by not mentioning other people in Hirsi Ali’s case, leaving her story to stand as the emotional signpost for her argument, and her anger.
The use of quotes and personal stories, emotion and political theory, is how Holmes “sells” his audience. His veneer of neutrality between the two authors has several cracks in it, but his attempt to be evenhanded does not quite fall flat.
Mark Steyn does not attempt to be evenhanded. He is also writing an article, not a review, so he has carte blanche to be as opinionated as he likes. And he is. While Holmes begins with the biography of a woman who, though important, may yet be unknown to the readers of his review, Steyn begins his article with, “Sept. 11, 2001, was not ‘the day everything changed,’ but the day that revealed how much had already changed,” a universal beginning to English-speaking readers, in the United States. Since the article is an excerpt from a longer piece of writing called, “America Alone,” it is not hard to see where he is coming from. From the first words of this excerpt, he is playing on fears that he knows are already present to help drive his point.
The opposing duality in the first sentence makes him sound lyrical. In that same first paragraph, he uses lists, perhaps to establish intellectual authority. He also uses some colloquial language, as well as bringing the reader in to the prose. “If you’d said that... most folks would have thought you were crazy.” “Most folks.” Really. Then he says, “Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.” A metaphor. How literary. But despite it being a very bad metaphor, it does imbue him with a certain amount of... well, I think what it imbues him with is a matter for debate. But it is there.*
He continues: “This is about the seven-eighths below the surface...” “This,” presumably refers to his article. Oh, and that ties in to his inane iceberg metaphor because seven-eighths of an iceberg is below the surface. I get it now. Great. Some substance, please?
And does substance ever arrive, beginning in the form of a math problem. “If your school has 200 guys and you’re playing a school with 2,000 pupils...” It rather illustrates his statistics nicely, but it also makes them hard to check because you are already invested in the imagery he has created. Or, at least, he wants you to be. He gives a statistic, and then tells “you” how “you” respond to knowing it. And the statistics come past and furious, usually accompanied by some kind of imagery attached.
When he says, “Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all,” he is subtly setting himself apart from the “experts,” while saying that he is going to the “basic” root. He even puts it in a mathematical formulation further down the page. He is saying that he is not an expert, while at the same time wielding population statistics in “friendly” language. He keeps coming back to “demography” as the defining signpost of his argument. His argument can basically be summed up as the pessimistic tagline, “How The West Was Screwed.”
His criticisms of the American government belong on the Glen Beck Show. He uses “you” continually, a method of personification very different from Holmes. In Steyn, “Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you’ll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.” Leaving aside that “big time” is not hyphenated, let’s “we” examine that for a minute. It is symptomatic of much of Steyn’s writing, in that he makes a statement, and then expounds on it. Note “your vulnerability” and the suggestion that one’s government changes one’s ability to make decisions. Also note the absolute disrespect of calling what happened on Flight 93, “good news.” But he’s making a point. This one, thankfully, without icebergs.
He also defines the words he uses, acting as his own dictionary. This reminded me of the narration in Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” where the narrator uses a big word and then explains the word’s meaning in the context of that particular sentence, often partially obscuring the dictionary definition in the process, because it is such a specific definition. The analogy holds here. He specifies his multi-syllabic, sometimes vague word choices based on the context.
Holmes and Steyn write very, very differently. They are both writing for audiences they expect to more or less agree with them. But while Holmes is trying to consider, Steyn is trying to scare. He is more effective than Holmes is, because taking a stand is inherently more powerful than considering something, especially in text.
*Icebergs do not “bob up,” they break off glaciers. They do not topple things, they sink them. Furthermore, did we really need a Titanic reference in there?
Holmes is ostensibly writing a review of two nonfiction books. He begins the review by introducing one of the authors, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in detail. He uses her biography to highlight key moments in his article, giving her arguments emotional potency. Perhaps this is a reflection of the tactics Hirsi Ali uses in her book, but in either case, Holmes puts her, and to a lesser extent Ian Buruma, in the foreground.
He disappears almost entirely from the article. “Hirsi Ali argues...” “In Hirsi Ali’s view...” “Hirsi Ali urges...” “Buruma remarks...” “Buruma argues...” “Buruma describes...” These links are the ways that Holmes moves from one part of his examination of the issues to another. He mixes hypotaxis and parataxis. His sentences are long, as he usually needs one of the above framing clauses to begin an idea. Since very little of what he writes is framed as coming from him, he has to orient every statement from one of the two reviewees, to the reading public. He acts as conduit.
He hardly appears at all except for a few remarks at the end of the review, in a studied show of impartiality. “One comes away from these two remarkable books suspecting that neither compromise nor confrontation will do much to avert the coming train crash between a resentful minority of indigenous Europeans and a potentially violent minority of young men among the millions of Muslims now permanently residing in Europe.” And again, with, “One might even argue that, in today’s Europe, the Enlightenment ideal of universal citizenship is already dead.” That “One” can really only be one man in his review, since he quotes and names almost everyone else who has a voice in it. Holmes comes in at the very end to sum up, and insert a point of view that seems unforgivably wishy-washy, given the highly emotional problems the books he has been reviewing holds.
He does not “review” as much as sum up, quoting the authors and putting them in conversation with each other. He attempts neutrality, but it is clear from the amount of time he spends on Hirsi Ali’s biography that at least his emotional, if not political sensibility, is clearly in her corner.
Holmes poses questions central to the issues, and then uses quotes and the personified points of view of the authors to answer them, setting them up in conversation with eahc other. If it were not for the titles at the beginning of the review, it would be hard to tell that he was writing about two separate books.
Other writers get into the act, too. Oliver Roy, Fortuyn, and Baruch Spinoza all make appearances while Holmes is elucidating Buruma’s point of view. It may be that Buruma makes a point of mentioning/quoting those figures in his own book, but by using them in the review, Holmes subtly weakens Buruma’s stance. He does this by not mentioning other people in Hirsi Ali’s case, leaving her story to stand as the emotional signpost for her argument, and her anger.
The use of quotes and personal stories, emotion and political theory, is how Holmes “sells” his audience. His veneer of neutrality between the two authors has several cracks in it, but his attempt to be evenhanded does not quite fall flat.
Mark Steyn does not attempt to be evenhanded. He is also writing an article, not a review, so he has carte blanche to be as opinionated as he likes. And he is. While Holmes begins with the biography of a woman who, though important, may yet be unknown to the readers of his review, Steyn begins his article with, “Sept. 11, 2001, was not ‘the day everything changed,’ but the day that revealed how much had already changed,” a universal beginning to English-speaking readers, in the United States. Since the article is an excerpt from a longer piece of writing called, “America Alone,” it is not hard to see where he is coming from. From the first words of this excerpt, he is playing on fears that he knows are already present to help drive his point.
The opposing duality in the first sentence makes him sound lyrical. In that same first paragraph, he uses lists, perhaps to establish intellectual authority. He also uses some colloquial language, as well as bringing the reader in to the prose. “If you’d said that... most folks would have thought you were crazy.” “Most folks.” Really. Then he says, “Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.” A metaphor. How literary. But despite it being a very bad metaphor, it does imbue him with a certain amount of... well, I think what it imbues him with is a matter for debate. But it is there.*
He continues: “This is about the seven-eighths below the surface...” “This,” presumably refers to his article. Oh, and that ties in to his inane iceberg metaphor because seven-eighths of an iceberg is below the surface. I get it now. Great. Some substance, please?
And does substance ever arrive, beginning in the form of a math problem. “If your school has 200 guys and you’re playing a school with 2,000 pupils...” It rather illustrates his statistics nicely, but it also makes them hard to check because you are already invested in the imagery he has created. Or, at least, he wants you to be. He gives a statistic, and then tells “you” how “you” respond to knowing it. And the statistics come past and furious, usually accompanied by some kind of imagery attached.
When he says, “Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all,” he is subtly setting himself apart from the “experts,” while saying that he is going to the “basic” root. He even puts it in a mathematical formulation further down the page. He is saying that he is not an expert, while at the same time wielding population statistics in “friendly” language. He keeps coming back to “demography” as the defining signpost of his argument. His argument can basically be summed up as the pessimistic tagline, “How The West Was Screwed.”
His criticisms of the American government belong on the Glen Beck Show. He uses “you” continually, a method of personification very different from Holmes. In Steyn, “Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you’ll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.” Leaving aside that “big time” is not hyphenated, let’s “we” examine that for a minute. It is symptomatic of much of Steyn’s writing, in that he makes a statement, and then expounds on it. Note “your vulnerability” and the suggestion that one’s government changes one’s ability to make decisions. Also note the absolute disrespect of calling what happened on Flight 93, “good news.” But he’s making a point. This one, thankfully, without icebergs.
He also defines the words he uses, acting as his own dictionary. This reminded me of the narration in Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” where the narrator uses a big word and then explains the word’s meaning in the context of that particular sentence, often partially obscuring the dictionary definition in the process, because it is such a specific definition. The analogy holds here. He specifies his multi-syllabic, sometimes vague word choices based on the context.
Holmes and Steyn write very, very differently. They are both writing for audiences they expect to more or less agree with them. But while Holmes is trying to consider, Steyn is trying to scare. He is more effective than Holmes is, because taking a stand is inherently more powerful than considering something, especially in text.
*Icebergs do not “bob up,” they break off glaciers. They do not topple things, they sink them. Furthermore, did we really need a Titanic reference in there?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Assignment for 11/9 - Guru Montaigne
On Genre in Fiction
There is a certain air of distaste among a segment of the reading population for genre fiction. Especially for those types which do their best to entertain while eschewing most turns of phrase that make high fiction so entertaining at times.
I am a malleable reader. I want to to be entertained and I want what I’m reading to be entertaining, hopefully at the same time. Is this such an impossible request? A scanning of recent titles in my local Barnes & Noble suggests that I am not going to have much luck. There are deaths in families, the search for love and meaning in everyday life after an ugly divorce, a missing journal of Virginia Woolf, a troubled child with access to guns, young women sold into indentured servitude, and a man trapped on a island with insane people, mind-altering chemicals and a chip on his shoulder. And that is just one shelf.
While some of these are going to be written better than others, there is a common thread that runs through them all: misery. The themes are misery, loss, and epiphany through an outside influence. Perhaps it will be in the form of a handsome man, a piece of paper, or a mental patient, perhaps there will be enough variation on the theme so that the book will have won a prize of some sort, or that it will be sporting the movie tie-in paperback cover. But this will not detract from how nonsensical it is that book after book is put out about how miserable fictional people are, when it is the books that spend their narrative time cashing in on happy endings that make the most money.
In a thriller, the kidnapper will be captured and the child found alive. In a romance novel, the guy will get the girl. In a teen fiction novel about a girl torn between her love of a vampire and her love of tanning on the beach, stakings will not be mentioned. The common theme in all of these is that though misery occurs, it does not need to be prescriptive. These are the novels that sell best, to the dismay of publishers and authors everywhere.
It is possible to meld these those types. How much better would it be if the books about vampires, the books about fictional terrorists, the books about relationships between consenting adults, were written well? Would they sell? Would they act as cross-overs? It is only a matter of time before some enterprising young author decides to try it, as so few have done in the age of “genre” fiction, and is given that most supreme of accolades: No one knowing where to shelve your book in Barnes & Noble. Dreams, idle dreams, I know not what they mean.
There is a certain air of distaste among a segment of the reading population for genre fiction. Especially for those types which do their best to entertain while eschewing most turns of phrase that make high fiction so entertaining at times.
I am a malleable reader. I want to to be entertained and I want what I’m reading to be entertaining, hopefully at the same time. Is this such an impossible request? A scanning of recent titles in my local Barnes & Noble suggests that I am not going to have much luck. There are deaths in families, the search for love and meaning in everyday life after an ugly divorce, a missing journal of Virginia Woolf, a troubled child with access to guns, young women sold into indentured servitude, and a man trapped on a island with insane people, mind-altering chemicals and a chip on his shoulder. And that is just one shelf.
While some of these are going to be written better than others, there is a common thread that runs through them all: misery. The themes are misery, loss, and epiphany through an outside influence. Perhaps it will be in the form of a handsome man, a piece of paper, or a mental patient, perhaps there will be enough variation on the theme so that the book will have won a prize of some sort, or that it will be sporting the movie tie-in paperback cover. But this will not detract from how nonsensical it is that book after book is put out about how miserable fictional people are, when it is the books that spend their narrative time cashing in on happy endings that make the most money.
In a thriller, the kidnapper will be captured and the child found alive. In a romance novel, the guy will get the girl. In a teen fiction novel about a girl torn between her love of a vampire and her love of tanning on the beach, stakings will not be mentioned. The common theme in all of these is that though misery occurs, it does not need to be prescriptive. These are the novels that sell best, to the dismay of publishers and authors everywhere.
It is possible to meld these those types. How much better would it be if the books about vampires, the books about fictional terrorists, the books about relationships between consenting adults, were written well? Would they sell? Would they act as cross-overs? It is only a matter of time before some enterprising young author decides to try it, as so few have done in the age of “genre” fiction, and is given that most supreme of accolades: No one knowing where to shelve your book in Barnes & Noble. Dreams, idle dreams, I know not what they mean.
Assignment for 11/9 - James
“Paste” is a story about the things we want to believe set against the things that are shown to be true, but that we do not want to acknowledge. In this case, it is the life of a now-dead woman who was an actress when she was young, and had nothing left over but a box of costume jewelry, and one lone string of real and valuable pearls. Her stepson claims that they are only paste, imitations of the real thing. He wants to believe that his stepmother was likewise only a pale imitiation of an actress, that she never did anything to earn her those pearls, as a gift, or perhaps as something else. But the pearls, and she, were the real thing, or so we are led to believe.
The authorial voice of this piece comes out and brings the reader into direct collusion with the narration at one point in the first pages of the story. “Our young woman gave a start...” (85) Other than that, it is as straightforward as Henry James ever gets, in his heart of hearts. The first long paragraph of exposition is notoriously James. “...Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.” (84) This half-sentence is rife with the dualities that make James so fun (or so plodding) to read. The “rather” alone is a rhetorical strategy that James often uses to make an observation about his characters without coming right out and saying what he wants his reader to come away with. In this case, through the mostly-limited third person perspective, Charlotte observes the world around her and reacts to it with a sensibility that seems to be an innocent and untrained version of the narrator.
Hypotactic sentences in the running style support the narrative device of having Charlotte be the main faucet of information for the first page and a half of the story. The high style of this point of view is justified by having her be a governess, but she is a naturally perceptive person. The narrator does not play this up, but allows her to speak for herself through her thoughts. The tone of her thoughts is intimate. Unlike the narrator, she does not know she is being read.
The authorial voice of this piece comes out and brings the reader into direct collusion with the narration at one point in the first pages of the story. “Our young woman gave a start...” (85) Other than that, it is as straightforward as Henry James ever gets, in his heart of hearts. The first long paragraph of exposition is notoriously James. “...Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.” (84) This half-sentence is rife with the dualities that make James so fun (or so plodding) to read. The “rather” alone is a rhetorical strategy that James often uses to make an observation about his characters without coming right out and saying what he wants his reader to come away with. In this case, through the mostly-limited third person perspective, Charlotte observes the world around her and reacts to it with a sensibility that seems to be an innocent and untrained version of the narrator.
Hypotactic sentences in the running style support the narrative device of having Charlotte be the main faucet of information for the first page and a half of the story. The high style of this point of view is justified by having her be a governess, but she is a naturally perceptive person. The narrator does not play this up, but allows her to speak for herself through her thoughts. The tone of her thoughts is intimate. Unlike the narrator, she does not know she is being read.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Assignment for 11/4 - Montaigne
Reading Montaigne is a lot of fun. He is a very smart man, and yet, he does not belabor his intelligence as something peculiar to him. I expected that I was reading an Enlightenment thinker. Finding myself in the Renaissance was a shock only because his spelling has doubtlessly been modernized. (For which, let it be said, I am eternally grateful.)
The over-arching organizational structure of Montaigne’s essay XV is that of a point-by-point dialogue with another writer, a form which remains fairly popular today, especially on internet message boards. In Montaigne’s case, he is responding to some Virgil. He, as far as I can tell, does not directly translate any of the verses. This is not surprising, since in Montaigne’s day, it was a safe bet that whoever was reading his essays in the first place could read Latin as well. He only really needs the Latin verses as an organizational principle, since his opinions far outstrip the scope of responding to, in most cases, is only a fraction of a sentence of Virgil. It is possible to strip the Latin from the piece completely, and lose barely any meaning, but much organization. Without knowing what the Latin says, it is hard to tell how close he stays to the form of a strict response to a classical thinker, but it is a safe bet, given the way he writes, that he roams far afield.
He refers to many classical thinkers, although it seems that he restricts himself to quoting Virgil. Keeping the classical philosophers and writers in mind was a way of showing his audience how educated he was. It gave him legitimacy. This was, and still is, a common way of establishing authority in an argument. However, Montaigne does not seem to be arguing any one thing. He makes a lot of observations, many contradictory, most interesting.
Montaigne’s subject meanders in this essay. He uses the running style to draw a reader in to his mindset and thought process. He goes from one subject to another, hinging on one of the Latin phrases. On page 22 he switches from discussing women, marriage, adultery, and jealousy, to discussing language, writing, his own writing, its deficiencies, and his process. This change is sudden, achieved through his response to a certain excerpt of Virgil.
Montaigne never writes about only one thing at a time. He is always considering multiple ideas. His sentences are full of the interplay between one thought and another. He follows a thought until he is done writing about it, or until something interests him more. He hardly ever returns to an earlier thought. Each of the collections of subjects in the essay that he touches on could be the singular focus of a piece of writing. By modern standards, most of the topic-sections in this piece stand as their own essays, albeit essays without theses.
His writing is dense, packed with ideas about whatever is holding his attention in that particular paragraph. Either he is responding in short bursts to different passages of Latin, or he is jumping off a passage for pages of writing at a time. His sentences are complicated, being long strings of what, in another writer, would be hypotactic sentences. In his writing, they are merely clauses. In his longer sentences, there are usually lists of ideas, or qualities, that he ascribes to some particular part of an argument.
Take the following: “The wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant, of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.” (33)
We have liberty, truth, essence. Little, feigned, common, provincial rules. Natural, general, constant. Civility and ceremony. And this is a sentence on the simple side.
He uses expostulation where appropriate, bringing the emotion of his piece up by dramatically crying out in the middle of a paragraph, or a sentence.
He is self-conscious about his writing. But whether this is real or a conceit of his time, it is hard to tell. He is certainly dedicated to criticizing his abilities as an author.
He draws everything he has been talking about back in the last page of the essay, and ends with a joke. There is very little else to say at that point, except perhaps, “I wish I could do that.”
The over-arching organizational structure of Montaigne’s essay XV is that of a point-by-point dialogue with another writer, a form which remains fairly popular today, especially on internet message boards. In Montaigne’s case, he is responding to some Virgil. He, as far as I can tell, does not directly translate any of the verses. This is not surprising, since in Montaigne’s day, it was a safe bet that whoever was reading his essays in the first place could read Latin as well. He only really needs the Latin verses as an organizational principle, since his opinions far outstrip the scope of responding to, in most cases, is only a fraction of a sentence of Virgil. It is possible to strip the Latin from the piece completely, and lose barely any meaning, but much organization. Without knowing what the Latin says, it is hard to tell how close he stays to the form of a strict response to a classical thinker, but it is a safe bet, given the way he writes, that he roams far afield.
He refers to many classical thinkers, although it seems that he restricts himself to quoting Virgil. Keeping the classical philosophers and writers in mind was a way of showing his audience how educated he was. It gave him legitimacy. This was, and still is, a common way of establishing authority in an argument. However, Montaigne does not seem to be arguing any one thing. He makes a lot of observations, many contradictory, most interesting.
Montaigne’s subject meanders in this essay. He uses the running style to draw a reader in to his mindset and thought process. He goes from one subject to another, hinging on one of the Latin phrases. On page 22 he switches from discussing women, marriage, adultery, and jealousy, to discussing language, writing, his own writing, its deficiencies, and his process. This change is sudden, achieved through his response to a certain excerpt of Virgil.
Montaigne never writes about only one thing at a time. He is always considering multiple ideas. His sentences are full of the interplay between one thought and another. He follows a thought until he is done writing about it, or until something interests him more. He hardly ever returns to an earlier thought. Each of the collections of subjects in the essay that he touches on could be the singular focus of a piece of writing. By modern standards, most of the topic-sections in this piece stand as their own essays, albeit essays without theses.
His writing is dense, packed with ideas about whatever is holding his attention in that particular paragraph. Either he is responding in short bursts to different passages of Latin, or he is jumping off a passage for pages of writing at a time. His sentences are complicated, being long strings of what, in another writer, would be hypotactic sentences. In his writing, they are merely clauses. In his longer sentences, there are usually lists of ideas, or qualities, that he ascribes to some particular part of an argument.
Take the following: “The wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant, of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.” (33)
We have liberty, truth, essence. Little, feigned, common, provincial rules. Natural, general, constant. Civility and ceremony. And this is a sentence on the simple side.
He uses expostulation where appropriate, bringing the emotion of his piece up by dramatically crying out in the middle of a paragraph, or a sentence.
He is self-conscious about his writing. But whether this is real or a conceit of his time, it is hard to tell. He is certainly dedicated to criticizing his abilities as an author.
He draws everything he has been talking about back in the last page of the essay, and ends with a joke. There is very little else to say at that point, except perhaps, “I wish I could do that.”
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Assignment for 11/2 - The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto is an incredibly angry piece of writing. It is strident, so convinced of its own superiority that there are times when it seems like it has forgotten what it is talking about. This is a disease common to most polemic that lasts longer than a couple of pages. There are times when it is hard to tell if Marx and Engels are tearing down the bourgeoisie or praising it.
“The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.“
All of that could be a paean to the global economy, written by some up-and-coming staffer during the Clinton administration. Though, to be fair, they probably couldn’t write as well.
The historical lens that the Manifesto begins with is how it attempts to establish credibility. It uses a lot of repetition, running through Modern Industry, the bourgeoisie, back to Modern Industry, and then the proletariat, although the Manifesto falls about a little bit when talking about the proletariat. It knows the proletariat does all the things the bourgeoisie does not do. The Manifesto is much more interested in bashing the bourgeois than in supporting the proles, and it shows. Probably because Marx and Engels knew much more about the bourgeoisie, having been part of it their entire lives.
The pattern the first section of the Communist Manifesto puts forward is one of cycles, steadily reducing to one end. The Manifesto thinks that end is the “inevitable” destruction of the bourgeoisie. The Manifesto’s power is in its utter conviction.
“The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.“
All of that could be a paean to the global economy, written by some up-and-coming staffer during the Clinton administration. Though, to be fair, they probably couldn’t write as well.
The historical lens that the Manifesto begins with is how it attempts to establish credibility. It uses a lot of repetition, running through Modern Industry, the bourgeoisie, back to Modern Industry, and then the proletariat, although the Manifesto falls about a little bit when talking about the proletariat. It knows the proletariat does all the things the bourgeoisie does not do. The Manifesto is much more interested in bashing the bourgeois than in supporting the proles, and it shows. Probably because Marx and Engels knew much more about the bourgeoisie, having been part of it their entire lives.
The pattern the first section of the Communist Manifesto puts forward is one of cycles, steadily reducing to one end. The Manifesto thinks that end is the “inevitable” destruction of the bourgeoisie. The Manifesto’s power is in its utter conviction.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Assignment for 10/21 - Hemingway
“Hills Like White Elephants” is both enigmatic and extremely easy to understand, once the imagery of the story is unlocked, and once it is unequivocally decided that the young couple are discussing a probable abortion. Rounded hills call to mind a pregnant belly, the elephants are those in the room with them with the not directly discussed nearly-child, and a “white elephant” is a rummage sale where you get rid of things that you don’t want any longer. Though this term is anachronistic in our time, it was used frequently in the early half of the last century. It was a garage sale before most people had garages. It also carried the connotation that there were valuable items among the junk, but no one had bothered to separate them beforehand.
Hemingway’s writing is like a house waiting for the new owners to arrive and move in. Without the furniture of emotional context, backstory, or detailed description, the narration is an empty, echoing room. The narration does not comment on the imagery used in the story, it just stands back and lets the characters draw metaphors. This is a method of characterization that in some ways depends on the narration to be neutral, which often leads to a sense that the narration is harsh. A lack is discerned as coldness. This is something that Hemingway relies upon to carry the emphasis in his writing.
When the girl says, “‘It tastes like liquorice,’” and then puts the glass down, note that licorice has been used as an abortifacient since ancient times.
Hemingway’s writing is like a house waiting for the new owners to arrive and move in. Without the furniture of emotional context, backstory, or detailed description, the narration is an empty, echoing room. The narration does not comment on the imagery used in the story, it just stands back and lets the characters draw metaphors. This is a method of characterization that in some ways depends on the narration to be neutral, which often leads to a sense that the narration is harsh. A lack is discerned as coldness. This is something that Hemingway relies upon to carry the emphasis in his writing.
When the girl says, “‘It tastes like liquorice,’” and then puts the glass down, note that licorice has been used as an abortifacient since ancient times.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Assignment for 10/19
Christopher Durang is insane. Have you ever read his DMV sketch? Yeah. Crazy man. It doesn’t stop him from being funny and disturbing at the same time. In fact, his being nuts is probably what allows him to do it so well. “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You” is actually one of his more lucid plays.
The play is essentially a send-up of strict Catholicism. Durang has Sister Mary explain most of its core beliefs, focusing especially on ones that don’t make much sense, like changes to canonical belief that are not retroactive. There are a lot of important questions that Sister Mary does not answer. She just rolls right over them, only to have those same questions brought up by the former students who come to visit her. Diane and Gary’s deaths may be symbolic of all the Catholics who become “dead” to their families when certain things -- abortion, being gay, not quite believing -- are known.
Her behavior is a strange mix of maternal and childlike at the same time. Her affection for Thomas is almost maternal, but the way she acts towards her old students is petty and histronic. It calls her sanity into question, where before she was just eccentric. In many ways her old students have become older than she is. Their life experiences have taken them beyond the dogma that she taught them. She is reactionary, then, and mean, because she cannot accept anything that does not conform to her heavily circumscribed view of life.
There are so many things Sister Mary Ignatius can’t explain for us, and those are the things that organized deistic religion doesn’t do such a good job with, either.
Durang’s writing would probably be classed as “low,” in Lanham’s scheme. The play is supposed to be both a easy-to-understand presentation, so it makes sense that Sister Mary would be speaking in simple language. What has always bothered me about the “high/middle/low” spectrum is that, like so many other categorization schema, it is used to denote the quality of the work, rather than the quality of the prose. However, this is not what Lanham does, and I am very pleased with that. The quality of the prose overall does reflect on the rest of the piece, (meaning, success, etc.) but an author can employ many different styles in the same piece. In fiction, when functioning as narrator, describer of scenes and characters, mood-setter, and dialogue writer. In non-fiction, depending on the audience, the desired effect, whether it is meant to be read aloud or to oneself, the possibilities are endless. Good stylists often move between styles to achieve their desired outcomes, no matter what they are writing.
I would class Clinton’s speech as an example of this. He uses complex phrasing with more simplistic language to reach a large audience that he must draw to him. Orwell uses a uniformly high style in “Politics and the English Language.” His diction is varied, his phrasing carries the weight of his words effortlessly, and he works references, his own extremely pointed view, and close readings into the whole.
The play is essentially a send-up of strict Catholicism. Durang has Sister Mary explain most of its core beliefs, focusing especially on ones that don’t make much sense, like changes to canonical belief that are not retroactive. There are a lot of important questions that Sister Mary does not answer. She just rolls right over them, only to have those same questions brought up by the former students who come to visit her. Diane and Gary’s deaths may be symbolic of all the Catholics who become “dead” to their families when certain things -- abortion, being gay, not quite believing -- are known.
Her behavior is a strange mix of maternal and childlike at the same time. Her affection for Thomas is almost maternal, but the way she acts towards her old students is petty and histronic. It calls her sanity into question, where before she was just eccentric. In many ways her old students have become older than she is. Their life experiences have taken them beyond the dogma that she taught them. She is reactionary, then, and mean, because she cannot accept anything that does not conform to her heavily circumscribed view of life.
There are so many things Sister Mary Ignatius can’t explain for us, and those are the things that organized deistic religion doesn’t do such a good job with, either.
Durang’s writing would probably be classed as “low,” in Lanham’s scheme. The play is supposed to be both a easy-to-understand presentation, so it makes sense that Sister Mary would be speaking in simple language. What has always bothered me about the “high/middle/low” spectrum is that, like so many other categorization schema, it is used to denote the quality of the work, rather than the quality of the prose. However, this is not what Lanham does, and I am very pleased with that. The quality of the prose overall does reflect on the rest of the piece, (meaning, success, etc.) but an author can employ many different styles in the same piece. In fiction, when functioning as narrator, describer of scenes and characters, mood-setter, and dialogue writer. In non-fiction, depending on the audience, the desired effect, whether it is meant to be read aloud or to oneself, the possibilities are endless. Good stylists often move between styles to achieve their desired outcomes, no matter what they are writing.
I would class Clinton’s speech as an example of this. He uses complex phrasing with more simplistic language to reach a large audience that he must draw to him. Orwell uses a uniformly high style in “Politics and the English Language.” His diction is varied, his phrasing carries the weight of his words effortlessly, and he works references, his own extremely pointed view, and close readings into the whole.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Assignment for 10/14 - Faulkner
“Dry September” for a title already sets the story on edge. Something is going to be wrong there. The weather is held complicit in the action. “Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass---the rumor, the story, whatever it was.” Maybe if there had been a little rain, this construction suggests, everyone might have been a little more circumspect about the whole thing. The “bloody September twilight” is the “aftermath of sixty-two rainless days.” Not the aftermath of an action, however slight or misunderstood, but the aftermath of two months of hot, dry weather.
Miss Minnie Cooper is the character the story hangs on. Whatever she said about Will Mayes, no matter how innocuous it was, started the trouble. She is not desirable to the men in her town, and hasn’t been for years. “...the sitting and lounging men did not even follow her with their eyes any more.” This is also not the first time she said something about unwanted attention from a man. “‘Did it really happen’ a third said. ‘This ain’t the first man scare she ever had, like Hawkshaw says. Wasn’t there something about a man on the kitchen roof, watching her undress, about a year ago?’” She is not considered reliable by the men in town, but when her accusation is against a black man, they can’t help but believe her. If they didn’t, they would have to take Will Mayes’ word against hers. The women do not consider her that reliable, either. “Then to one another: ‘Do you suppose anything really happened?’ their eyes darkly aglitter, secret and passionate. ‘Shhhhhhhhhh! Poor girl! Poor Minnie!’” They are pitying her not only for what might have happened, (and probably didn’t) but also for the lengths she went to.
So, Minnie desperately wants attention. To get it, she says/does/alludes to something Will Mayes said/did/alluded to, and gets him, if not killed, than very thoroughly incapacitated. This the sickening effect of actually getting her sexual attention from the men in her community. “Then the drug store, where even the young men lounging in the door-way tipped their hats and followed with their eyes the motion of her hips and legs when she passed.” She has set herself up as a desired woman by the most forbidden of people, and the one who will be least likely believed when he says that nothing happened at all. She is the one with the power when she lassos Will Mayes into her desperate bid for attention. This may be the only interaction with a man where she has had the power in her entire life. Minnie is left screaming to herself, as the other women comfort her even while they check her hair for signs of age.
At the end of the story, no one is left thinking they did the right thing. There is no redemption, and there will be none. Faulkner sees to that in the final sentences, when he describes John McLendon at night, after he has returned home. “At last he found it and wiped his body again, and, with his body pressed against the dusty screen, he stood panting. There was no movement, no sound, not even an insect. The dark world seemed to like stricken beneath the cold moon and the lidless stars.” In the silence, McLendon’s panting makes him the animal, trapped inside his house and inside the actions he took. The world is “stricken,” as if unable to believe or bear what has happened. The stars have no lids. They are open, though it seems they should be shut. Nothing is right.
Miss Minnie Cooper is the character the story hangs on. Whatever she said about Will Mayes, no matter how innocuous it was, started the trouble. She is not desirable to the men in her town, and hasn’t been for years. “...the sitting and lounging men did not even follow her with their eyes any more.” This is also not the first time she said something about unwanted attention from a man. “‘Did it really happen’ a third said. ‘This ain’t the first man scare she ever had, like Hawkshaw says. Wasn’t there something about a man on the kitchen roof, watching her undress, about a year ago?’” She is not considered reliable by the men in town, but when her accusation is against a black man, they can’t help but believe her. If they didn’t, they would have to take Will Mayes’ word against hers. The women do not consider her that reliable, either. “Then to one another: ‘Do you suppose anything really happened?’ their eyes darkly aglitter, secret and passionate. ‘Shhhhhhhhhh! Poor girl! Poor Minnie!’” They are pitying her not only for what might have happened, (and probably didn’t) but also for the lengths she went to.
So, Minnie desperately wants attention. To get it, she says/does/alludes to something Will Mayes said/did/alluded to, and gets him, if not killed, than very thoroughly incapacitated. This the sickening effect of actually getting her sexual attention from the men in her community. “Then the drug store, where even the young men lounging in the door-way tipped their hats and followed with their eyes the motion of her hips and legs when she passed.” She has set herself up as a desired woman by the most forbidden of people, and the one who will be least likely believed when he says that nothing happened at all. She is the one with the power when she lassos Will Mayes into her desperate bid for attention. This may be the only interaction with a man where she has had the power in her entire life. Minnie is left screaming to herself, as the other women comfort her even while they check her hair for signs of age.
At the end of the story, no one is left thinking they did the right thing. There is no redemption, and there will be none. Faulkner sees to that in the final sentences, when he describes John McLendon at night, after he has returned home. “At last he found it and wiped his body again, and, with his body pressed against the dusty screen, he stood panting. There was no movement, no sound, not even an insect. The dark world seemed to like stricken beneath the cold moon and the lidless stars.” In the silence, McLendon’s panting makes him the animal, trapped inside his house and inside the actions he took. The world is “stricken,” as if unable to believe or bear what has happened. The stars have no lids. They are open, though it seems they should be shut. Nothing is right.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Assignment for 10/12 - Baldwin
The frame of “Stranger in the Village” allows James Baldwin to write about dangerous subjects in relative safety. He is thinking about America having left it, in this essay. Geographically in Switzerland, Baldwin is in a country famed for remaining neutral during wars. He is reporting on a war in this essay, one fought within America for control of history, perception, and power. He has taken on the role of observer while still claiming his place in the trenches. He moves from warrior to war correspondent without tripping.
Switzerland is not an entirely safe place for Baldwin, but it is unsafe in an almost quaint fashion. He is the first black man the people in this town have ever seen. The baggage they carry about having a black man in their presence is primarily religious. “...other children, having been taught that the devil is a black man, scream in genuine anguish as I approach.” (163) Their fear rises from a metaphor rather than from deep-rooted psychological uneasiness, and while their reactions anger him, he can come to terms with certain parts of his treatment in town because he can attribute it to a single source.
Baldwin is a stranger to this small town in more ways than one. He has left his country. He is a different color. The language he thinks in is foreign. One of the main attracting features of the town is the hot springs, and “cripples” often come. He is not physically a cripple, but the way he writes about being a black man in America is clearly meant to draw the parallel. He is in a place for restoration, and it seems that he does find some there. He writes about the way children respond to him in the first part of the essay, using the theme of childhood innocence and in fact, the innocence of an entire community of people, to set off what he has to say about America. “There is a dreadful abyss between the streets of this village and the streets of the city in which I was born, between the children who shouted Neger! today and those who shouted Nigger! yesterday--the abyss is experience, the American experience. The syllable hurled behind me today expresses, above all, wonder: I am a stranger here. But I am not a stranger in America...” (164)
He uses complex hypotactic sentences, stacking one after another. They link. They flow. They are arranged to make his point, and the point is not a pleasant one, so it has to be written as unassailable. The sentences also periodic. They have been planned. He is not talking. He is writing.
Switzerland is not an entirely safe place for Baldwin, but it is unsafe in an almost quaint fashion. He is the first black man the people in this town have ever seen. The baggage they carry about having a black man in their presence is primarily religious. “...other children, having been taught that the devil is a black man, scream in genuine anguish as I approach.” (163) Their fear rises from a metaphor rather than from deep-rooted psychological uneasiness, and while their reactions anger him, he can come to terms with certain parts of his treatment in town because he can attribute it to a single source.
Baldwin is a stranger to this small town in more ways than one. He has left his country. He is a different color. The language he thinks in is foreign. One of the main attracting features of the town is the hot springs, and “cripples” often come. He is not physically a cripple, but the way he writes about being a black man in America is clearly meant to draw the parallel. He is in a place for restoration, and it seems that he does find some there. He writes about the way children respond to him in the first part of the essay, using the theme of childhood innocence and in fact, the innocence of an entire community of people, to set off what he has to say about America. “There is a dreadful abyss between the streets of this village and the streets of the city in which I was born, between the children who shouted Neger! today and those who shouted Nigger! yesterday--the abyss is experience, the American experience. The syllable hurled behind me today expresses, above all, wonder: I am a stranger here. But I am not a stranger in America...” (164)
He uses complex hypotactic sentences, stacking one after another. They link. They flow. They are arranged to make his point, and the point is not a pleasant one, so it has to be written as unassailable. The sentences also periodic. They have been planned. He is not talking. He is writing.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Assignment for 10/7 - Didion
When Joan Didion says, on the 6th page of the essay “Goodbye to All That,” that she and her husband moved away from New York three years before she wrote the essay, I was surprised. The distance of three years did not seem to be nearly enough for the way she was writing. There was a clarity about the experience of living in New York that felt as though it could only be seen from a greater distance. But there was also a lack of affection for her younger self, a bitterness, that came through. “That was the year, my twenty-eight, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable, and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every word, all of it.” (4) She never comes right out and says that she wasted eight years of her life, but there is a great deal of anger in those words.
There are occasional touches of humor, as on the parenthetical aside on the sixth page where she talks about why it was such a problem that she “could not bear Upper Madison Avenue on weekday mornings,” but mostly the story is sad. She keeps referring to all the things she did not know. (The curtains on page 4, how much to tip on page 1, that there would eventually be a cost for all of this, throughout.) She uses the word “should” a lot, as if she wants to go back and shake her former self.
“That is what it was all about about, wasn’t it? Promises?” (4) Who is she talking to? The reader? The city? Herself, of several years ago? It could be one of them, or all of them. “Now when New York comes back to me it comes in hallucinatory flashes, so clinically detailed that I sometimes wish that memory would effect the distortion with which it is commonly credited.” (4) Her sentences are generally long, rushing out over themselves so that it feels as though she is trying to get all of thise out of her, where it can trouble her no longer.
Even the things that she liked about the city are dulled, cast in an unflattering light. “Some years passed, I still did not lose that sense of wonder about New York. I began to cherish the loneliness of it, the sense that at any given time no one need know where I was or what I was doing.” (5) That is a common feeling, but in the context of the rest of the piece it feels as though she is scoffing at herself for being selfish. New York, it seemed, made her selfish. It made her unaware. But now that she has become aware, the process of looking back is made bleak.
There are occasional touches of humor, as on the parenthetical aside on the sixth page where she talks about why it was such a problem that she “could not bear Upper Madison Avenue on weekday mornings,” but mostly the story is sad. She keeps referring to all the things she did not know. (The curtains on page 4, how much to tip on page 1, that there would eventually be a cost for all of this, throughout.) She uses the word “should” a lot, as if she wants to go back and shake her former self.
“That is what it was all about about, wasn’t it? Promises?” (4) Who is she talking to? The reader? The city? Herself, of several years ago? It could be one of them, or all of them. “Now when New York comes back to me it comes in hallucinatory flashes, so clinically detailed that I sometimes wish that memory would effect the distortion with which it is commonly credited.” (4) Her sentences are generally long, rushing out over themselves so that it feels as though she is trying to get all of thise out of her, where it can trouble her no longer.
Even the things that she liked about the city are dulled, cast in an unflattering light. “Some years passed, I still did not lose that sense of wonder about New York. I began to cherish the loneliness of it, the sense that at any given time no one need know where I was or what I was doing.” (5) That is a common feeling, but in the context of the rest of the piece it feels as though she is scoffing at herself for being selfish. New York, it seemed, made her selfish. It made her unaware. But now that she has become aware, the process of looking back is made bleak.
Assignment for 10/5 - Plath
Reading depression is always uncomfortable, especially when it’s done well. Sylvia Plath does it well. The zombie voice that makes decisions the person behind it never makes, the way there is nothing to do but endure, waiting for the next thing to go wrong, feeling the weight of everything that remains unknown as a personal failure, all of that is made inevitably believable. Given Plath’s history, it is no surprise that she can write about depression so accurately.
The writing in this excerpt is uncomfortable. It begins with the italicised statemend, “The face in the mirror looked like a sick Indian.” (112) This is not a useful comparison, because a “sick Indian” is not an image that readily forms in the mind. A “sick person” would, but a “sick Indian” is off, slightly racist, playing on assumptions that no one has. As well, having a face stand in for an entire human figure is wrong. The mass is wrong, the scale is off. From the first line, the world is already not behaving the way it is supposed to.
The narrator, unnamed until the seventh page of the chapter, is alone while travelling, a common occurance in literature. Trains, planes, long car trips, these are all good places to insert some exposition, or a character study, or some action that will give the reader more information. When the narrator, “dropped the compact into my pocketbook,” it shows a certain carelessness for things. (12) The scenery is not seen as a whole. It is a, “colossal junkyard, the swamps and back lots of Connecticut flashed past, one broken-down fragment bearing no relation to another.” (12) This could so easily have gone the other way. All the things in a junkyard are connected by their presence in the junkyard. There are connections to make, but the narrator is not making them, and claiming that they do not exist at all.
First-person narration creates automatic subjectivity, since having only one point of view means that you are relying on one character for all your information. The narrator is the character, and the implied author sneaks in there, too. In this piece, it highlights Esther’s loneliness. Since Esther-as-author is choosing this form of narration, the loneliness is to a certain extent self-imposed.
Reading The Bell Jar is complicated by the knowledge that this novel was intended to be autobiographical, and that Plath killed herself. It is as if the novel has an end beyond the last page, and that end is the more final one. The author has merged with the writing. So to say, as I did in the last paragraph, that Esther is the author of her own story, and has chosen the first-person point of view, and that she could have chosen something else, is to say that if it had been in third-person, Esther would still have been the author. Even in limited third-person, there is no question that the narrator is the one telling the story, with the implied author and author making up that particular holy trinity. Esther would no longer be the author. But I made the assumption that the possibility existed, because I know that Esther is, to a greater extent than usual, Sylvia. That she was meant by Sylvia to be a mirroring of Sylvia. Perhaps Esther is Sylvia’s face reflected in the train window. A ghost. Because of Sylvia’s death, Esther remains as her ghost-in-print, immortal in some limited first-person way.
The writing in this excerpt is uncomfortable. It begins with the italicised statemend, “The face in the mirror looked like a sick Indian.” (112) This is not a useful comparison, because a “sick Indian” is not an image that readily forms in the mind. A “sick person” would, but a “sick Indian” is off, slightly racist, playing on assumptions that no one has. As well, having a face stand in for an entire human figure is wrong. The mass is wrong, the scale is off. From the first line, the world is already not behaving the way it is supposed to.
The narrator, unnamed until the seventh page of the chapter, is alone while travelling, a common occurance in literature. Trains, planes, long car trips, these are all good places to insert some exposition, or a character study, or some action that will give the reader more information. When the narrator, “dropped the compact into my pocketbook,” it shows a certain carelessness for things. (12) The scenery is not seen as a whole. It is a, “colossal junkyard, the swamps and back lots of Connecticut flashed past, one broken-down fragment bearing no relation to another.” (12) This could so easily have gone the other way. All the things in a junkyard are connected by their presence in the junkyard. There are connections to make, but the narrator is not making them, and claiming that they do not exist at all.
First-person narration creates automatic subjectivity, since having only one point of view means that you are relying on one character for all your information. The narrator is the character, and the implied author sneaks in there, too. In this piece, it highlights Esther’s loneliness. Since Esther-as-author is choosing this form of narration, the loneliness is to a certain extent self-imposed.
Reading The Bell Jar is complicated by the knowledge that this novel was intended to be autobiographical, and that Plath killed herself. It is as if the novel has an end beyond the last page, and that end is the more final one. The author has merged with the writing. So to say, as I did in the last paragraph, that Esther is the author of her own story, and has chosen the first-person point of view, and that she could have chosen something else, is to say that if it had been in third-person, Esther would still have been the author. Even in limited third-person, there is no question that the narrator is the one telling the story, with the implied author and author making up that particular holy trinity. Esther would no longer be the author. But I made the assumption that the possibility existed, because I know that Esther is, to a greater extent than usual, Sylvia. That she was meant by Sylvia to be a mirroring of Sylvia. Perhaps Esther is Sylvia’s face reflected in the train window. A ghost. Because of Sylvia’s death, Esther remains as her ghost-in-print, immortal in some limited first-person way.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Assignment for 9/30 - Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence begins “The Rocking-Horse Winner” as if it is a fairy tale. The first half of the first paragraph is only concerned with the life of one woman.
To start: “There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.” The possibilities are endless, following this sentence’s modifying clauses, which bring the reader down much as the woman must have been brought down. The sentence relives the experience.
Then, shorter: “She married for love, and the love turned to dust.” A compound sentence that brings to mind death, (“to dust we all return,” after all) and the disappointment of knowing that though love has ceased, the marriage remains, and will remain until the participants are dust as well. The upside-down fairy-tale continues, with love that dies and a marriage at the beginning of the story.
A longer sentence: “She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them.” Another series of three, building on the clauses from the previous sentence. The rhyming and similar rhythms of, “and the love turned to dust,” and, “she felt they had been thrust,” hits the ear like a nursery rhyme done badly.
Back to shorter: “They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her.” The narrator has now opened the narrative to include the actions of others, but the thoughts and experiences are still hers.
The fewest modifying clauses yet: “And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself.” More of her experiences, now made internal. The repetition of “fault” indicates that the problem is uncertain, but she thinks that they are right, that a flaw does exist, and that by hiding it from them, she will hide it from herself.
And again: “Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew.” Where Lawrence might use commas to break sentences into smaller pieces, he instead leaves the the sense of urgency that the lack of commas imply. In this case it highlights her uncertainty and self-doubt.
The sentence grows again: “Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart grow hard.” The fairy tale beginning of this sentence also leaves the reader lulled, soothed to what comes next. This woman seems to know where the center of her heart is because of its relationship to her children, and its hardness.
The narrator uses the beginning of the paragraph to create a fairy tale space in which this woman exists within her world without being, “wife” or, “mother.” She is an independent operator for a few sentences, and that provides a narrative viewpoint of substantial complexity.
To start: “There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.” The possibilities are endless, following this sentence’s modifying clauses, which bring the reader down much as the woman must have been brought down. The sentence relives the experience.
Then, shorter: “She married for love, and the love turned to dust.” A compound sentence that brings to mind death, (“to dust we all return,” after all) and the disappointment of knowing that though love has ceased, the marriage remains, and will remain until the participants are dust as well. The upside-down fairy-tale continues, with love that dies and a marriage at the beginning of the story.
A longer sentence: “She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them.” Another series of three, building on the clauses from the previous sentence. The rhyming and similar rhythms of, “and the love turned to dust,” and, “she felt they had been thrust,” hits the ear like a nursery rhyme done badly.
Back to shorter: “They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her.” The narrator has now opened the narrative to include the actions of others, but the thoughts and experiences are still hers.
The fewest modifying clauses yet: “And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself.” More of her experiences, now made internal. The repetition of “fault” indicates that the problem is uncertain, but she thinks that they are right, that a flaw does exist, and that by hiding it from them, she will hide it from herself.
And again: “Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew.” Where Lawrence might use commas to break sentences into smaller pieces, he instead leaves the the sense of urgency that the lack of commas imply. In this case it highlights her uncertainty and self-doubt.
The sentence grows again: “Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart grow hard.” The fairy tale beginning of this sentence also leaves the reader lulled, soothed to what comes next. This woman seems to know where the center of her heart is because of its relationship to her children, and its hardness.
The narrator uses the beginning of the paragraph to create a fairy tale space in which this woman exists within her world without being, “wife” or, “mother.” She is an independent operator for a few sentences, and that provides a narrative viewpoint of substantial complexity.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Assignment for 9/29 - Orwell
“In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender them.”
George Orwell’s style is authoritative. From the first sentence, “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it,” it is obvious that the writer is about to Have Definite Opinions. He is not writing to puzzle a matter over. He is writing to state his case, and if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t read it, since you probably wouldn’t agree with him anyway. He commands vocabulary, sentence structure, and thought with such facility, that it is easy to be swept away.
He shows problems in the English language, and explains how they effect political discourse, which in turn effects the lives and, in some cases, deaths of people all around the world. “... to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.” There is a method to his writing. He is showing all the ways in which the English language can be used to persuade, as he convinces his readership that there is something wrong with English as she is writ, and further, that English can be saved from its own dustbin.
Orwell’s definition of what makes for good political writing follows Strunk and White very closely. He would be in automatic opposition to the notion of “style” as we have been discussing it, but for a single sentence at the end of the essay. “I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.” The “literary use of language,” apparently, is doing something other than expressing thought. Not precisely concealing or preventing it, but another remove is present in his lexicon of what sort of language belongs where.
He is exquisitely aware throughout his writing. He keeps track of what it is doing, even to the point where he acknowledges that he has been breaking his own rules. His sixth rule is the most important: “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” He bows to style even as he attempts to prescribe it, opening the door to the almost inevitable conclusion that having a conscious style is the most important part of writing anything.
He blames lazy thought for the preponderance of bad writing. He blames a society that rewards stock phrases arranged in a way that hits the ear well while saying nothing. (See Clinton’s inaugural speech.) He blames politicians who are not interested in having their meaning understood. He does not use anaphora.
What Orwell does do is vary his sentence structures. He writes in compound-complex sentences with many modifying clauses, or he writes in shorter sentences, or somewhere in between. His writing is periodic, thought out beforehand to the last comma. He is fond of parallelisms and of weighing one part of his paragraph against another part, using phrases like, “On the contrary,” and, “On the other hand.” In a looser style, he would be accused of talking to himself. But in this piece, he is most clearly writing to himself. The difference is startling. His style is often hypotactic, but never less than strategic. His voice is consistently strident and often caustic. He does not fall into the trap of the writing he complains about because he is writing about something concrete. Writing is not abstract. It might be about abstractions, but words and punctuation can be pinned down and taken apart.
George Orwell’s style is authoritative. From the first sentence, “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it,” it is obvious that the writer is about to Have Definite Opinions. He is not writing to puzzle a matter over. He is writing to state his case, and if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t read it, since you probably wouldn’t agree with him anyway. He commands vocabulary, sentence structure, and thought with such facility, that it is easy to be swept away.
He shows problems in the English language, and explains how they effect political discourse, which in turn effects the lives and, in some cases, deaths of people all around the world. “... to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.” There is a method to his writing. He is showing all the ways in which the English language can be used to persuade, as he convinces his readership that there is something wrong with English as she is writ, and further, that English can be saved from its own dustbin.
Orwell’s definition of what makes for good political writing follows Strunk and White very closely. He would be in automatic opposition to the notion of “style” as we have been discussing it, but for a single sentence at the end of the essay. “I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.” The “literary use of language,” apparently, is doing something other than expressing thought. Not precisely concealing or preventing it, but another remove is present in his lexicon of what sort of language belongs where.
He is exquisitely aware throughout his writing. He keeps track of what it is doing, even to the point where he acknowledges that he has been breaking his own rules. His sixth rule is the most important: “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” He bows to style even as he attempts to prescribe it, opening the door to the almost inevitable conclusion that having a conscious style is the most important part of writing anything.
He blames lazy thought for the preponderance of bad writing. He blames a society that rewards stock phrases arranged in a way that hits the ear well while saying nothing. (See Clinton’s inaugural speech.) He blames politicians who are not interested in having their meaning understood. He does not use anaphora.
What Orwell does do is vary his sentence structures. He writes in compound-complex sentences with many modifying clauses, or he writes in shorter sentences, or somewhere in between. His writing is periodic, thought out beforehand to the last comma. He is fond of parallelisms and of weighing one part of his paragraph against another part, using phrases like, “On the contrary,” and, “On the other hand.” In a looser style, he would be accused of talking to himself. But in this piece, he is most clearly writing to himself. The difference is startling. His style is often hypotactic, but never less than strategic. His voice is consistently strident and often caustic. He does not fall into the trap of the writing he complains about because he is writing about something concrete. Writing is not abstract. It might be about abstractions, but words and punctuation can be pinned down and taken apart.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Assignment for 9/23 - Lanham summary
In Chapter 5, Lanham writes (talks) about voice (in writing). He is amplifying what he has been saying all along in Analyzing Prose. Different voices come through different styles. Prose is shaped by style. Voice is shaped by style. Point of view and meaning are shaped by style. Understanding how a piece is written is essential to fully understand what that piece is trying to get across.
This follows from what Lanham has been saying from the beginning of the introduction. Writing is much more like speaking than the stilted language of textbooks. Writers have individual personalities, and they come out of their prose in different ways. They use style to accomplish this feat of telepathic time travel, beaming from their time and mind to ours, becoming distinct -- through style.
Prose is one of the most flexible forms of communication we have. The same things that define our speech -- vocabulary, cadence, diction, rhythm -- appear in our writing, with similar effect. The subtle difference is that you can get away with things in speech that become glaringly obvious in writing, and so writing has to be more careful. More choosy about what tactics it employs, and when. Repetition is more jarring when repeated on the page, and alliteration more alarming. At the same time, reading aloud a piece of writing is a way of teasing out the writer's unique style in any given piece.
When Lanham writes about parataxis and hypotaxis, running and periodic styles, saccades, suspension, parallelism, anaphora, and isocolons, he is explaining the tools, or elements (if you will) of style. Strunk & White were unnecessarily prescriptive, but they popularized a great phrase.
This follows from what Lanham has been saying from the beginning of the introduction. Writing is much more like speaking than the stilted language of textbooks. Writers have individual personalities, and they come out of their prose in different ways. They use style to accomplish this feat of telepathic time travel, beaming from their time and mind to ours, becoming distinct -- through style.
Prose is one of the most flexible forms of communication we have. The same things that define our speech -- vocabulary, cadence, diction, rhythm -- appear in our writing, with similar effect. The subtle difference is that you can get away with things in speech that become glaringly obvious in writing, and so writing has to be more careful. More choosy about what tactics it employs, and when. Repetition is more jarring when repeated on the page, and alliteration more alarming. At the same time, reading aloud a piece of writing is a way of teasing out the writer's unique style in any given piece.
When Lanham writes about parataxis and hypotaxis, running and periodic styles, saccades, suspension, parallelism, anaphora, and isocolons, he is explaining the tools, or elements (if you will) of style. Strunk & White were unnecessarily prescriptive, but they popularized a great phrase.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Assignment for 9/21 - Joyce
General thoughts:
“Grace” begins with the reader dropped into the action. The detailed descriptions are made vague because we, as readers, have no context for them. Such writing leads to a sense of universality, as if this is a situation that happens in dozens of pubs every week, and we are reading this particular story by chance.
For almost two pages of prose, there are no proper names, adding to the feelings of being adrift without a real narrative anchor outlined above. This contrasts with the rest of the story, which focuses on names and the histories of the people who belong to them. There are a lot of names in this short story, and they are repeated often. Characters are never mentioned by their first names by the narrator. Tom Kernan, our unfortunate hero, is the one who is most often called by his first name by his friends. (The least religious of them all, think of the allusion to Doubting Thomas in the resurrection story.) His friends’ names have built-in meanings, as well. Mr Power, Mr Cunning-ham, Mr M’-Coy. Name meanings can never be truly prescriptive, but if meaning can be found, we should look.
One of the many things that Joyce does very well is dialogue. He has an ear that lets him write people in a way that leaves them distinct, and is able to balance conversations between more than two people, something that is hard to do well.
Grace, as pointed to in the title of the story, is a recurring theme throughout. There are parallels between grace and the saga of Mr Kernan’s silk hat, which has almost as active a role in the story as he does. There is a description of him that says, “He had never been seen in the city without a silk hat of some decency and a pair of gaiters. By grace of these two articles of clothing, he said, a man could always pass muster. (258, emphasis mine.) When the story begins, the hat is seen away from its owner, “rolled a few yards away.” (255) It is described as “a dinged silk hat” when brought upstairs by one of the gentlemen who carried Mr Kernan up. (255) By the end of the story, when Mr Kernan goes to church with his friends, “His hat, which had been rehabilitated by his wife, rested upon his knees... he held the brim of his hat lightly, but firmly, with the other hand.” (273) His hat is a part of him. Perhaps it embodies his sense of dignity, or hope.
Sentence-specific wallowing:
Joyce varies his sentence length throughout a passage. Given that he introduces a character before he gives their backstory, his writing is usually paratactic rather than cumulative, since we already know where they are at the present moment. He is filling in the gaps, not building to an assessment of their characters. The description of Mrs Kernan is a case in point.
There is a pattern of sentences arranged in the negative. “Not long before she had celebrated her silver wedding...” “In her days of courtship, Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure...” “The part of mother presented to her no insuperable difficulties...” This pattern creates a sense on the one hand of judicious measuring, and on the other, of detachment. Pattern 18 out of Sullivan appears in the first example, with past participles. “Not long before, she had celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimacy with her husband...” (259, emphasis mine.) Some of the negations in these sentences would seem to be prime candidates for paired constructions, (Patterns 16, 16a) but they remain unresolved. This leaves the sentence off-balance, and contributes to the sense of detachment that weaves through Mrs Kernan’s description.
“In her days of courtship, Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and she still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported and, seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had passed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the arm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat and lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon his other arm.” (And there’s that hat again, with “gracefully” modifiying it, to boot.)
This compound-complex sentence is near-dizzying in its attempts to impart information. It is only of the only paragraphs in Joyce that graze the hypotactic, but it is not as much cumulative as it is in the running style. These are still pieces of information presented with the syntactical democracy of parataxis, but they are loose, following one another, though not truly building on each other. It is description for its own sake, without an agenda beyond providing more information about a character.
“Grace” begins with the reader dropped into the action. The detailed descriptions are made vague because we, as readers, have no context for them. Such writing leads to a sense of universality, as if this is a situation that happens in dozens of pubs every week, and we are reading this particular story by chance.
For almost two pages of prose, there are no proper names, adding to the feelings of being adrift without a real narrative anchor outlined above. This contrasts with the rest of the story, which focuses on names and the histories of the people who belong to them. There are a lot of names in this short story, and they are repeated often. Characters are never mentioned by their first names by the narrator. Tom Kernan, our unfortunate hero, is the one who is most often called by his first name by his friends. (The least religious of them all, think of the allusion to Doubting Thomas in the resurrection story.) His friends’ names have built-in meanings, as well. Mr Power, Mr Cunning-ham, Mr M’-Coy. Name meanings can never be truly prescriptive, but if meaning can be found, we should look.
One of the many things that Joyce does very well is dialogue. He has an ear that lets him write people in a way that leaves them distinct, and is able to balance conversations between more than two people, something that is hard to do well.
Grace, as pointed to in the title of the story, is a recurring theme throughout. There are parallels between grace and the saga of Mr Kernan’s silk hat, which has almost as active a role in the story as he does. There is a description of him that says, “He had never been seen in the city without a silk hat of some decency and a pair of gaiters. By grace of these two articles of clothing, he said, a man could always pass muster. (258, emphasis mine.) When the story begins, the hat is seen away from its owner, “rolled a few yards away.” (255) It is described as “a dinged silk hat” when brought upstairs by one of the gentlemen who carried Mr Kernan up. (255) By the end of the story, when Mr Kernan goes to church with his friends, “His hat, which had been rehabilitated by his wife, rested upon his knees... he held the brim of his hat lightly, but firmly, with the other hand.” (273) His hat is a part of him. Perhaps it embodies his sense of dignity, or hope.
Sentence-specific wallowing:
Joyce varies his sentence length throughout a passage. Given that he introduces a character before he gives their backstory, his writing is usually paratactic rather than cumulative, since we already know where they are at the present moment. He is filling in the gaps, not building to an assessment of their characters. The description of Mrs Kernan is a case in point.
There is a pattern of sentences arranged in the negative. “Not long before she had celebrated her silver wedding...” “In her days of courtship, Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure...” “The part of mother presented to her no insuperable difficulties...” This pattern creates a sense on the one hand of judicious measuring, and on the other, of detachment. Pattern 18 out of Sullivan appears in the first example, with past participles. “Not long before, she had celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimacy with her husband...” (259, emphasis mine.) Some of the negations in these sentences would seem to be prime candidates for paired constructions, (Patterns 16, 16a) but they remain unresolved. This leaves the sentence off-balance, and contributes to the sense of detachment that weaves through Mrs Kernan’s description.
“In her days of courtship, Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and she still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported and, seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had passed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the arm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat and lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon his other arm.” (And there’s that hat again, with “gracefully” modifiying it, to boot.)
This compound-complex sentence is near-dizzying in its attempts to impart information. It is only of the only paragraphs in Joyce that graze the hypotactic, but it is not as much cumulative as it is in the running style. These are still pieces of information presented with the syntactical democracy of parataxis, but they are loose, following one another, though not truly building on each other. It is description for its own sake, without an agenda beyond providing more information about a character.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Assignment for 9/16 - Nabokov
Assignment for 9/16 - Nabokov
What is there to say about Nabokov that he hasn’t said about himself? I do not think this is quite fair. After all, it takes so much of the pressure off being a literary genius when you have already said that you are one. But he would be the first to agree that he was very good at styling sentences.
First-person narration is drawn to the running style, with its emphasis on the way people think as they are speaking out loud, or writing. The hypotaxis in Nabokov’s prose uncovers the minutely planned aspects of this piece without taking anything away from the narrator’s voice. A first-person narrator wants to get their story out just right, after all. Each piece of information follows on the one before, but without necessarily building on it. Even when it seems as though the narrator is trending periodic, he will suddenly rein in the intensity of the clauses, and sometimes change the subject entirely. The prose keeps the reader on edge, expecting a climax that never (ironically, given the narrator’s own frustrations) occurs.
"I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel in the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels, and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know these redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges."
The first sentence provides the biographical framework for the rest of the paragraph. A man was born in a specific year, in a specific place. But each of those is only apparently specific. We do not know the date, or where they were living. Already, we are drawn in to the first-person narrator, who has things he wants us to know, and things he does not.
“My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins.” The first part of this compound sentence, before the colon, has the father as its subject, with a few descriptive clauses. In the second part, there is a series of appositives following “a salad of racial genes.” This mixes patterns 3 and 10, in Sullivan’s vernacular.
The next sentence might have wandered in from another piece of fiction, given all the sense it makes.
“He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera.” This sentence seems like it is telling the reader something, but only raises more questions.
“His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively.” There is again description with attending obfuscation. (There should be a sentence pattern number for this.) It seems to mean that his father sold wine, and the two grandfathers sold jewels and silk. But which grandfather sold which combinations of items? Even though it clearly does not matter, it would be nice if the narrator were not handing out information like candy wrappers with nothing inside.
“At thirty,” (note pattern 14, as yet unseen, in the prepositional phrase before subject and verb) “he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. (Pattern 10a) There is a repetition of sorts in these last two sentences. In this sentence we also get two grandfathers, who are experts in two things “respectively,” and we do not learn which grandfather does which. And, since they are not named, it still does not matter. The narrator is talking about his great-grandfathers, after all. They cannot really have much bearing on his life, except to somehow anchor it.
The next sentence is an avalanche of clauses that definitely depend on one another for sense. (Most probably pattern 8) “My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)” (pattern 7) “when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set:” before the narrator changes the game entirely, “surely, you all know these redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.”
There is a repetition of a keyword (Pattern 9) in the word “midges,” and the only alliteration in the selection, in “redolent remnants of day.” The turn the sentence takes at the colon is dizzying, and probably meant to distract from the mother’s death. The two parenthetical notes, “(picnic, lightning)” and “(I am writing under observation)” are very suggestive, as they indicate the narrator’s super-literary sensibility of himself as a writer who has not explained everything, and is not alone in the process.
There is another repetition in “a pocket of warmth” and “a furry warmth.” “Furry” is the only tactile sensation in the entire paragraph, and “warmth” is what is entirely lacking in it. He is discussing his closest relatives as if they are strangers to be catalogued. He does not speak with genuine authority until the next paragraph. In this one, it seems like he is only reciting. He cannot speak with authority about his mother’s death, and so has to gloss over it.
What is there to say about Nabokov that he hasn’t said about himself? I do not think this is quite fair. After all, it takes so much of the pressure off being a literary genius when you have already said that you are one. But he would be the first to agree that he was very good at styling sentences.
First-person narration is drawn to the running style, with its emphasis on the way people think as they are speaking out loud, or writing. The hypotaxis in Nabokov’s prose uncovers the minutely planned aspects of this piece without taking anything away from the narrator’s voice. A first-person narrator wants to get their story out just right, after all. Each piece of information follows on the one before, but without necessarily building on it. Even when it seems as though the narrator is trending periodic, he will suddenly rein in the intensity of the clauses, and sometimes change the subject entirely. The prose keeps the reader on edge, expecting a climax that never (ironically, given the narrator’s own frustrations) occurs.
"I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel in the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels, and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know these redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges."
The first sentence provides the biographical framework for the rest of the paragraph. A man was born in a specific year, in a specific place. But each of those is only apparently specific. We do not know the date, or where they were living. Already, we are drawn in to the first-person narrator, who has things he wants us to know, and things he does not.
“My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins.” The first part of this compound sentence, before the colon, has the father as its subject, with a few descriptive clauses. In the second part, there is a series of appositives following “a salad of racial genes.” This mixes patterns 3 and 10, in Sullivan’s vernacular.
The next sentence might have wandered in from another piece of fiction, given all the sense it makes.
“He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera.” This sentence seems like it is telling the reader something, but only raises more questions.
“His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively.” There is again description with attending obfuscation. (There should be a sentence pattern number for this.) It seems to mean that his father sold wine, and the two grandfathers sold jewels and silk. But which grandfather sold which combinations of items? Even though it clearly does not matter, it would be nice if the narrator were not handing out information like candy wrappers with nothing inside.
“At thirty,” (note pattern 14, as yet unseen, in the prepositional phrase before subject and verb) “he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. (Pattern 10a) There is a repetition of sorts in these last two sentences. In this sentence we also get two grandfathers, who are experts in two things “respectively,” and we do not learn which grandfather does which. And, since they are not named, it still does not matter. The narrator is talking about his great-grandfathers, after all. They cannot really have much bearing on his life, except to somehow anchor it.
The next sentence is an avalanche of clauses that definitely depend on one another for sense. (Most probably pattern 8) “My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)” (pattern 7) “when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set:” before the narrator changes the game entirely, “surely, you all know these redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.”
There is a repetition of a keyword (Pattern 9) in the word “midges,” and the only alliteration in the selection, in “redolent remnants of day.” The turn the sentence takes at the colon is dizzying, and probably meant to distract from the mother’s death. The two parenthetical notes, “(picnic, lightning)” and “(I am writing under observation)” are very suggestive, as they indicate the narrator’s super-literary sensibility of himself as a writer who has not explained everything, and is not alone in the process.
There is another repetition in “a pocket of warmth” and “a furry warmth.” “Furry” is the only tactile sensation in the entire paragraph, and “warmth” is what is entirely lacking in it. He is discussing his closest relatives as if they are strangers to be catalogued. He does not speak with genuine authority until the next paragraph. In this one, it seems like he is only reciting. He cannot speak with authority about his mother’s death, and so has to gloss over it.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Assignment for 9/14 - Clinton
Clinton's speech:
This is a piece of writing meant to be spoken out loud. The punctuation supports its purpose, reminding the speaker when to push through, and when to pause for effect. It is designed to pull an audience in.
Anaphora appears several times in this speech, highlighting the ways in which the speech is targeting its hearers. Beginning in paragraph 13: “But when most people are working... when others cannot work... when the cost of health care devastates... when fear of crime robs... when millions of poor children cannot even imagine...” All this happens in one sentence. Each of the above is a clause separated by semi-colons. At the end of the speech, there is another case of anaphora, this time in full sentences.
“An idea born in revolution and renewed through 2 centuries of challenge. An idea tempered by the knowledge that, but for fate, we--the fortunate and the unfortunate--might have been each other. An idea ennobled by the faith that our nation can summon from its myriad diversity the deepest measure of unity. An idea infused with the conviction that America’s long heroic journey must go forever upward.” (Paragraph 39)
Notice the progression of the verbs beginning the sentences. “Born in revolution... tempered by the knowledge that... ennobled by the faith that... infused with the conviction that...” These are fighting words. While the second sentence is in more of a running style, the rest are periodic. These sentences are primarily paratactic in nature, but build on each other in the periodic style. They are reaching towards the clarion call of paragraph 40. This is language to rouse the rabble, and it works.
The repetition that sweeps a listener along might become tedious to a reader. Whereas a reader, able to go back and underline each time a word is used, (as this one certainly did) might get tired of “America,” “change,” “sacrifice,” and “generation,” a listener is only left with the feelings and personal associations these buzzwords inspire.
Clinton’s vocabulary is not simplistic. He uses many polysyllabic words. But he also defines them as he is speaking. In paragraph 23, he says, “Our Founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can do no less. Anyone who has ever watched a child’s eyes wander into sleep knows what posterity is.” So far, he is assuming that his audience understands the word, if not the somewhat strange metaphor. Then he says, “Posterity is the world to come--the world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibility.” He is educating as he is orating. The clauses are periodic, planned in light of the emotional response he wants to wring from his audience.
Political oratory is all about making an audience agree with the person speaking. This speech succeeds without pressing too hard on the listeners. It is a speech meant to inspire.
This is a piece of writing meant to be spoken out loud. The punctuation supports its purpose, reminding the speaker when to push through, and when to pause for effect. It is designed to pull an audience in.
Anaphora appears several times in this speech, highlighting the ways in which the speech is targeting its hearers. Beginning in paragraph 13: “But when most people are working... when others cannot work... when the cost of health care devastates... when fear of crime robs... when millions of poor children cannot even imagine...” All this happens in one sentence. Each of the above is a clause separated by semi-colons. At the end of the speech, there is another case of anaphora, this time in full sentences.
“An idea born in revolution and renewed through 2 centuries of challenge. An idea tempered by the knowledge that, but for fate, we--the fortunate and the unfortunate--might have been each other. An idea ennobled by the faith that our nation can summon from its myriad diversity the deepest measure of unity. An idea infused with the conviction that America’s long heroic journey must go forever upward.” (Paragraph 39)
Notice the progression of the verbs beginning the sentences. “Born in revolution... tempered by the knowledge that... ennobled by the faith that... infused with the conviction that...” These are fighting words. While the second sentence is in more of a running style, the rest are periodic. These sentences are primarily paratactic in nature, but build on each other in the periodic style. They are reaching towards the clarion call of paragraph 40. This is language to rouse the rabble, and it works.
The repetition that sweeps a listener along might become tedious to a reader. Whereas a reader, able to go back and underline each time a word is used, (as this one certainly did) might get tired of “America,” “change,” “sacrifice,” and “generation,” a listener is only left with the feelings and personal associations these buzzwords inspire.
Clinton’s vocabulary is not simplistic. He uses many polysyllabic words. But he also defines them as he is speaking. In paragraph 23, he says, “Our Founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can do no less. Anyone who has ever watched a child’s eyes wander into sleep knows what posterity is.” So far, he is assuming that his audience understands the word, if not the somewhat strange metaphor. Then he says, “Posterity is the world to come--the world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibility.” He is educating as he is orating. The clauses are periodic, planned in light of the emotional response he wants to wring from his audience.
Political oratory is all about making an audience agree with the person speaking. This speech succeeds without pressing too hard on the listeners. It is a speech meant to inspire.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Assignment for 9/9 - Saul Bellow
Then for the rest of the week Woody was busy, had jobs to run, office responsibilities, family responsibilities. He lived alone; as did his wife; as did his mistress: everybody in a separate establishment. Since his wife, after fifteen years of separation, had not learned to take care of herself, Woody did her shopping on Fridays, filled her freezer. He had to take her this week to buy shoes. Also, Friday night he always spent with Helen—Helen was his wife de facto. Saturday he did his big weekly shopping. Saturday night he devoted to Mom and his sisters. So he was too busy to attend to his own feelings except, intermittently, to note to himself, “First Thursday in the grave.” “First Friday, and fine weather.” “First Saturday; he’s got to be getting used to it.” Under his breath he occasionally said, “Oh, Pop."
Lanham claims that there is usually perfect syntactical marriage between subject and style in fiction, because fiction "creates the reality it describes." (Lanham 41) The beauty of Bellow's sentences is in how they provide information about, not only the narrative in which they occur, but the subtext as well. The parataxis in this passage mirrors the information that Woody was habitually too busy to think, especially about his father. Think about the life that is described here. Woody is a man with a wife who he's been taking care of for fifteen years of separation, a mistress, his mother, sisters, shopping for two households, everything compartmentalized in the sentences as it must be in Woody's head.
Bellow's sentences vary between short fragments, and longer, more complicated strings. "Since his wife, after fifteen years of separation, had not learned to take care of herself, Woody did her shopping on Fridays, filled her freezer." The hypotaxis leads us on a path through the relevant information, (Woody has a wife, separated for fifteen years, she still relies on him for everything)
and suggests fatigue by the time it arrives at, "filled her freezer." This is a woman who will not do a thing for herself, and we feel Woody's unspoken exhaustion at having to do for her, even though the matter-of-fact litany underscores the fact that Woody will not do anything but cater to her.
The next sentence, "Also, Friday night he always spent with Helen—Helen was his wife de facto," calls the reader's attention back to what immediately precedes it. He shops and provides for his wife on Fridays, but he spends his Friday nights with his "de facto" wife. I.e., the woman he sleeps with. The guilt is built into the structure of the sentences. It continues with, "Saturday he did his weekly big shopping. Saturday night he devoted to Mom and his sisters." His weekend is spent being dutiful, even to his own mistress. Note that "de facto" is not italicized. It is just part of the vocabulary used to describe Woody's life, and no other attention is called to it.
Repetition forms a big part of the description of Woody's schedule, as it does in the schedule itself. "Office responsibilities, family responsibilities," "He lived alone, as did his wife, as did his mistress." "Everybody body in a separate establishment... after fifteen years of separation." Friday repeats, Saturday repeats, then later on they repeat again as he thinks about his father lying in the ground. Woody's life is busy, lived by rote, except for the occasional flashes of what is going on in the ultimate resting position of death.
The way Woody pauses, "to note to himself" about his father's death is more like how someone would write in a diary. “First Thursday in the grave.” “First Friday, and fine weather.” “First Saturday; he’s got to be getting used to it.” Only in the third 'note' does Woody even disassociate himself from the man in the ground. Woody, by the construction of the first two 'notes,' might be the dead one. He even says, "Oh, Pop," under his breath.
Bellow's sentences are suited to the information and the feelings that they are trying to convey. This introduction to Woody's schedule is also a valuable window into what is important to him, and how he moves within his own life.
Lanham claims that there is usually perfect syntactical marriage between subject and style in fiction, because fiction "creates the reality it describes." (Lanham 41) The beauty of Bellow's sentences is in how they provide information about, not only the narrative in which they occur, but the subtext as well. The parataxis in this passage mirrors the information that Woody was habitually too busy to think, especially about his father. Think about the life that is described here. Woody is a man with a wife who he's been taking care of for fifteen years of separation, a mistress, his mother, sisters, shopping for two households, everything compartmentalized in the sentences as it must be in Woody's head.
Bellow's sentences vary between short fragments, and longer, more complicated strings. "Since his wife, after fifteen years of separation, had not learned to take care of herself, Woody did her shopping on Fridays, filled her freezer." The hypotaxis leads us on a path through the relevant information, (Woody has a wife, separated for fifteen years, she still relies on him for everything)
and suggests fatigue by the time it arrives at, "filled her freezer." This is a woman who will not do a thing for herself, and we feel Woody's unspoken exhaustion at having to do for her, even though the matter-of-fact litany underscores the fact that Woody will not do anything but cater to her.
The next sentence, "Also, Friday night he always spent with Helen—Helen was his wife de facto," calls the reader's attention back to what immediately precedes it. He shops and provides for his wife on Fridays, but he spends his Friday nights with his "de facto" wife. I.e., the woman he sleeps with. The guilt is built into the structure of the sentences. It continues with, "Saturday he did his weekly big shopping. Saturday night he devoted to Mom and his sisters." His weekend is spent being dutiful, even to his own mistress. Note that "de facto" is not italicized. It is just part of the vocabulary used to describe Woody's life, and no other attention is called to it.
Repetition forms a big part of the description of Woody's schedule, as it does in the schedule itself. "Office responsibilities, family responsibilities," "He lived alone, as did his wife, as did his mistress." "Everybody body in a separate establishment... after fifteen years of separation." Friday repeats, Saturday repeats, then later on they repeat again as he thinks about his father lying in the ground. Woody's life is busy, lived by rote, except for the occasional flashes of what is going on in the ultimate resting position of death.
The way Woody pauses, "to note to himself" about his father's death is more like how someone would write in a diary. “First Thursday in the grave.” “First Friday, and fine weather.” “First Saturday; he’s got to be getting used to it.” Only in the third 'note' does Woody even disassociate himself from the man in the ground. Woody, by the construction of the first two 'notes,' might be the dead one. He even says, "Oh, Pop," under his breath.
Bellow's sentences are suited to the information and the feelings that they are trying to convey. This introduction to Woody's schedule is also a valuable window into what is important to him, and how he moves within his own life.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Assignment for 9/2
Finding an example of the verb style was not difficult, reading the Sports section of the New York Times. I found the following excerpt in an article covering the US Open:
"Dent will play Ivan Navarro of Spain, and despite all the surgical work on his back, he said he felt no pain or discomfort after the 2-hour-50-minute match. After dropping the first set, he swept the next two, then held on in the fourth to win on his serve.
"When López, who argued and complained throughout about lines calls, hit a backhand into the net on match point, Dent took a deep breath, held his fists up near his face and screamed in exultation."*Using emphasis: "Dent will play Ivan Navarro of Spain... After dropping the first set, he swept the next two, then held on in the fourth to win on his serve. When Lopez, who argued and complained throughout about lines calls, hit a backhand into the next on match point, Dent took a deep breath, held his fists up near his face, and screamed in exultation."
Verb styles create excitement. In this case, the verb style lends energy to a piece that is reporting an emotional and athletic event. There is also occasional alliteration, as in "Dent...deep," and, "fists...face." The action in the excerpt is made gripping by the use of verbs like "dropping," "swept," "held on," and so on.
The kinds of verbs used also draw attention to where the writer's sympathies lie. Lopez, "argued and complained throughout," while Dent, "swept the next two, then held on... to win." It is not conclusive, by any means, but the kinds of words a writer uses are just as important as how the words are used.
Finding something written in the noun style was more difficult, but the Science Times proved invaluable:
"The reason that many computer scientists are pursuing this goal is that the shrinking of the transistor has approached fundamental physical limits. Increasingly, transistor manufacturers grapple with subatomic effects, like the tendency for electrons to “leak” across material boundaries. The leaking electrons make it more difficult to know when a transistor is in an on or off state, the information that makes electronic computing possible. They have also led to excess heat, the bane of the fastest computer chips.
"The transistor is not just another element of the electronic world. It is the invention that made the computer revolution possible. In essence it is an on-off switch controlled by the flow of electricity. For the purposes of computing, when the switch is on it represents a one. When it is off it represents a zero. These zeros and ones are the most basic language of computers."**
A few excerpts with emphasis:
- "The reason that many computer scientists are pursuing this goal is that the shrinking of the transistor has approached fundamental physical limits."
- "The transistor is not just another element of the electronic world.
- In essence it is an on-off switch controlled by the flow of electricity."
- "These zeros and ones are the most basic language of computers."
The voice in this piece is expecting a readership with a certain foundation of knowledge, and at least a passing interest in what is being reported. It is conversational, and perhaps slightly condescending.
It is easy to connect with the first piece because of the action and emotion involved. Verbs indicate an experience the reader can relate to, even if they have never touched a tennis racket. The second piece requires more thought, because it deals with ideas and realities that need longer words.
Nouns represent abstract collections of knowledge held together in small packages, subject to varying interpretation based on individual experience. Verbs hold on to their readers.
*http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/sports/tennis/02night.html?_r=1&hp
**http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/science/01trans.html?ref=science
Monday, August 31, 2009
Greetings!
Hello, fellow shipmates!
Robin suggested that we talk about what we admire in a prose stylist and who we would like, as writers, to be when we grow up. My own fiction writing, when left to its own devices, follows more old-fashioned patterns. The writers who resonate with me in terms of fiction style are Michel Faber, Virginia Woolf, J.R.R. Tolkien, Edward Rutherford, and a whole cavalcade of 19th century authors. All those clauses and long sentences these writers employ are a little bit like decorative cake baking. (Which I have never done, but enjoy watching in fast-motion on YouTube.*) Each clause layers on the one before, and by the end, I feel the whole sentence-cake is more delicious than any single layer of icing or decoration would have been on its own.
An authorial narrator, the one who comes off the page and interacts with the reader directly in the persona of telling the story and having all the relevant information the reader needs, is also a favorite stylistic device of mine. That's something many 19th century authors do, and it draws me more deeply into the story to feel as though I am in conversation with my book. Henry Fielding is my best example of an authorial narrator. That quality of being the narrator's confidant, or particular audience, is why I also enjoy the first person point of view so much. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, the first person voice is what draws me to writers from Laurie R. King, Paul Auster, and Dave Barry to Harper Lee, Jane Austen, and J.D. Salinger.
It's my first entry, so I was definitely more informal here than I'll be in the actual Assignment assignments. But I think I am going to be updating this blog more often than is required, and I'll be waxing philosophical, poetical, and any other -icals that reasonably pertain to close reading.
See you Wednesday!
*For an example of decorative cake baking, please follow this link to YouTube and the construction of a magnificent LEGO Batman cake.
Robin suggested that we talk about what we admire in a prose stylist and who we would like, as writers, to be when we grow up. My own fiction writing, when left to its own devices, follows more old-fashioned patterns. The writers who resonate with me in terms of fiction style are Michel Faber, Virginia Woolf, J.R.R. Tolkien, Edward Rutherford, and a whole cavalcade of 19th century authors. All those clauses and long sentences these writers employ are a little bit like decorative cake baking. (Which I have never done, but enjoy watching in fast-motion on YouTube.*) Each clause layers on the one before, and by the end, I feel the whole sentence-cake is more delicious than any single layer of icing or decoration would have been on its own.
An authorial narrator, the one who comes off the page and interacts with the reader directly in the persona of telling the story and having all the relevant information the reader needs, is also a favorite stylistic device of mine. That's something many 19th century authors do, and it draws me more deeply into the story to feel as though I am in conversation with my book. Henry Fielding is my best example of an authorial narrator. That quality of being the narrator's confidant, or particular audience, is why I also enjoy the first person point of view so much. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, the first person voice is what draws me to writers from Laurie R. King, Paul Auster, and Dave Barry to Harper Lee, Jane Austen, and J.D. Salinger.
It's my first entry, so I was definitely more informal here than I'll be in the actual Assignment assignments. But I think I am going to be updating this blog more often than is required, and I'll be waxing philosophical, poetical, and any other -icals that reasonably pertain to close reading.
See you Wednesday!
*For an example of decorative cake baking, please follow this link to YouTube and the construction of a magnificent LEGO Batman cake.
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