vonnegut hocus pocus

I'd like to save my words for Vonnegut for tomorrows presentation, but here are a few of general observations about his writing style:

1. V is a fan of well-placed, short and choppy sentences. Instead of writing long, suspenseful sentences, he write short, suspenseful ones. He's no Hemingway, of course, but I think Vonnegut is one of the few writers that writes short sentences well. Anyone can write a long sentence and fill it with suspense ("they are harmless. they are shmoos.") , but not everyone can write condensed suspense. V uses this tactic a lot in "The Blood of Dresden;" the shorter sentences attract the most attention while the longer sentences run less noticeably through the essay.

2. In all three of the these essays we chose, V chronically uses adjective-noun alliteration/consonance: feverish fighters, bunch of bastards (this is not an adj/n group, but rather a prep phrase but I'm going to count it here anyway), dull rumble of distant air raids, staunch subterranean fortress, splintered statuary and shattered trees, soft citizens, secondhand clothing salesman, painful place, automobile accident, etc, etc.

3. V is also fond of the chiasmus and listing patterns in his sentences. From "Cold Turkey:"
"Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
"A fire at one end, and a fool at the other."
From "Teaching the Unteachable:"
"[Writing well is something] God lets you do or declines to let you do."
An impressive list:
"That's the most delightful part of the game, of course: the pretense that everybody comes to a writers conference is a writer....a doctors' conference, where everybody gets to pretend to be a doctor; a lawyer's conference, where everybody gets to pretend to be a lawyer; and so on--and maybe even a Kennedy conference, where everybody pretends to be somehow associated with the Kennedys."

4. V generally writes in a running style. This also, I think, accounts for some of his shorter sentences--he writes in a very conversational manner, one true to real conversation (which is mostly brief and fragmented). He interrupts his stories with other side stories (like the bit about his son, Mark, the doctor), gets to his point somewhere down the third page of the essay, and finally finishes without luster (he just ends, you know).

uncanny

Freud's vocabulary in "The Uncanny" is of note: in the very first sentence he uses the word "impelled" instead of compelled. Hmm. Alliterates with the "i" in "investigates" but the "c" in "compelled" would have been, well, more compelling and sharp. Impel, however, means to urge or encourage while compel means to take action as a result of pressure or coercion; impel is very similar in meaning to compel but suggests even more strongly an inner drive to do something and often a greater urgency in the desire to act. Therefore, Freud's word choice here is very particular. He says "It is only rarely that a psycho-analyst feels impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics, even when aesthetics is understood to mean not merely the theory of beauty but the theory of the qualities of feeling." Even in these rare instances, the pscyho-analyst does not have the strong inner drive or feel great urgency in investigating the subject of aesthetics.

At any rate, Freud's vocabulary throughout this essay is formal and dignified, yet his tone is personal. "The Uncanny" is written in a sort of running style. Freud seems to be thinking aloud--he knows what he's going for as a main point, but his sentences are loose and conversational. Notice this conversational, yet simultaneously reasonable and persuasive tone (almost a bit like Plato/Socrates in the Republic, yeah?):

Two courses are open to us at the outset. Either we can find out what meaning has come to be attached to the word 'uncanny' in the course of its history; or we can collect all those properties of persons, things, sense-impressions, experiences and situations which arouse in us the feeling of uncanniness, and then infer the unknown nature of the uncanny from what all these examples have in common. I will say at once that both courses lead to the same result: the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. How this is possible, in what circumstances the familiar can become uncanny and frightening, I shall show in what follows. Let me also add that my investigation was actually begun by collecting a number of individual cases, and was only later confirmed by an examination of linguistic usage. In this discussion, however, I shall follow the reverse course.

The first sentence of this passage is rather short. It begins the rhythm of the paragraph: TWO courSES are Open to US at the OUTset. Kind of iambic, actually. The placing of the commas, semicolons, and colons in the middles of the following sentences are also a part of this rhythm; when read aloud, these pauses come naturally and occur at just the point in the sentence when an audience would want to quickly internalize what was just thrown at them. Ie: "I will say at once that both courses lead to the same result: (quarter beat pause) the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar." This pause sets up Freud's rhetorical punchline; its a anticipatory lag before the climax. He does this again in the following sentence: "How this is possible, (eighth beat pause) in what circumstances the familiar can become uncanny and frightening, (sixteenth beat) I shall show in what follows."

In addition to the persuasive tone Freud uses in this essay, I think that to an extent it also has an instructional tone. Take for example, his extensive definition and translations of the word "uncanny" in Latin, Greek, Spanish, etcetc and finally in German (which has many definitions).

stories from och aye land

Sir Walter Scott is difficult to sift through. The weight of his short story "The Two Drovers" rests mostly in his hypotactic noun-style. He buries the action of his sentences within noun phrases and other such syntatic layers. A prime example of this style:

Many large droves were set off for England, under the protection of their owners, or of the topsmen whom they employed in the tedious, laborious, and responsible office of driving the cattle for many hundred miles, from the market where they had been purchased to the fields or farmyards where they were to be fattened for the shambles.

Without the layering phrases, this sentence would read "Many large droves were set off for England from the market where they had been purchased to the fields or farmyards where they were to be fattened for the shambles." Even without the phrases, this sentence is still long, complex, and passive.

Scott densely packs his sentences with information, forcing readers to meticulously read each word or else skim the sentence, looking for its main point.

Another predominant trait of Scott's story: foreshadowing. The moment Robin Oig's old witch-aunt warns him that if he goes on his journey, he will have English blood on his hands, readers are alerted to the fact that he will, inevitably, kill an Englishman (obviously Harry Wakefield since he is the only Englishman around). Always in such stories the old hag/oracle character is right and no matter how the hero tries to avoid the prophecy, it always comes about. Even though Robin hands over his knife to Hugh Morrison, readers know it is with that very weapon that he will spill the Englishman's blood.

to be continued...

nanny theatrics

If my boss used words like "crepuscular" and "gadded" or "lampooned," I would probably write an exposé of him, too.

I found Woody Allen's short "Nanny Dearest" a little obnoxious. The style is striking, certainly, but it's pretentious just the same. That is, the vocabulary is highly pretentious. Allen also uses a lot of scientific jargon, adding to the pretense and distracting readers from the meat of the story.

Here is a list of the most magniloquent words I happened upon:

portent
vitriol
lampooned
crepuscular
ratiocinate
photon
truculent
ganglia
queried
truculent
strabismus
succubus
infractions
screed
concatenation
jackknifed

Really? Sure, these high style words add to the story and make Mr. B and family seem like priggish jerks, but it also gives one a headache to read. Allen's scientific or latin metaphors like "gadded about in my own pair of ventricles," "arrhythmic calisthenics," and "photon velocity" are obscure and forced. The latin lingo also sounds harsh and lacks alliteration.

Conrad

Conrad is one of those writers whose language is just exhaustive. But I don't mean exhaustive in bad way. His style is easy to over look if you try hard enough. If you don't try though, you'll notice how absurdly long his sentences are!--and how specifically detailed he is in description. This amount of setting description is rarely found in modern stories nor is it ever done so well, I think.

The Secret Sharer is mostly written in a middle style of diction with some higher style words mixed in. The length of Conrad's sentences and his general syntactics can easily be overlooked because the story is that damn intense. All of his words, however, in comparison to modern day neutral/middle style writing may seem a little archaic--a little too proper--but he is, after all, English.

Another thing about Conrad--he is stellar when it comes to alliteration and consonance which adds to the parallelism strewn throughout the story. Even the title--the Secret Sharer--has alliteration.

Take a look: "My eye followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the plain, according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter and farther away, til I lost it at last behind the mitre-shaped hill of the great pagoda." His skill with connotation/poetic sound is not as blatant and blaring as a writer like Nabokov, but it is subtle and neatly sewn into the diction.

Another good example of parallelism (and more alliteration/consonance):
"But I took heart from the reasonable thought that the ship was like other ships, the men like other men, and that the sea was not likely to keep any special surprises expressly for my discomfiture."

Some general observations on "The European Dilemma" and "The Future Belongs to Islam"

First of all, notice the titles of these two pieces: "The European Dilemma"--a rather passive and vague title, I should say. Sounds a lot like the politician's typical "mistakes were made" apology. "The Future Belongs to Islam," on the other hand, is blatant and almost blinding, like white fluorescent lights that make you cringe and squint.

Holmes' Euro-Dilemma article is written in a middle-high style. He uses a few pedantic words here and there, but doesn't necessarily write in a high-flowery tone. The article itself is not written in any particularly great style--its even a little dry. Holmes' precise vocabulary, however, is his greatest tool. Notice in the first paragraph, he immediately ushers the reader onto the side of Hirsi Ali with his descripton of van Gogh's murder: "A Moroccan Duth Islamist anmed Mohammed Bouyer shot van Gogh in a street in Amsterdam, slit his throat, and pinned to his body a death threat against Hirsi Ali..." Moreover, he writes these actions like a grocery list--shot, slit, pinned--as if to imply that Bouyeri shoots people and slits their throats every day. No biggie. The verbs Holmes uses here, however, are visual and frightening. Hmm...

So this is Holmes' method watered down: write in a dry, journalistic style but pepper the story with dramatic verbs and phrases like "savage crime scene."

Mark Steyn's "Future Belongs to Islam" is much different. This article is written very informally. And very right-wing. I can definitely see Rush Limbaugh going on a similar rant with similar crude jokes and simplistic arguments. Steyn uses a colloquial vocabulary, as if speaking not to the well-informed (as Holmes' article seems to) but to the everyday American or Westerner. His points are, indeed, compelling and even disturbing (I sat and stared at the paper for a good ten minutes after reading this article, chewing on the words I had just read); but because Steyn writes so abruptly and informally, I find it difficult to fully credit his arguments. It really can't be that simple----but I'm not about to get into politics right now.

No, I will end with pointing out one more difference between these two writers that characterise them perfectly with their political leanings: Holmes is very PC, while Steyn brazenly is not. Holmes is tentative to even offer a solution at the end of his article or his own view on which author is right. The passage where he talks about Hirsi Ali's grandmother "inflicting genital mutilation on her" is even written with obtuse words, as if to drown out the weight of what happened to Hirsi Ali. He calls it a "bit of primitive cruelty." The words minimise the action. Steyn lies, again, on the other side of the spectrum. He calls Native Americans INJUNS. If that's not politically incorrect, I don't know what is.

Paste

This Henry James story made me angry--Arthur made me angry, as did Mrs. Guy. It's one of those stories with one of those endings that leaves the reader just as helpless and frustrated as the cheated character.

James's use of parataxis makes him more present in the story and I, as a reader, knew he was in control of the fate of Aunt Prime's pearls the whole time. Thus with a fixed ending in mind, a reader would read this story just wanting to get to the end and find out what becomes of Charlotte and the pearls. But James won't give in that easily--his sentences are often interrupted with phrases and clauses and are built in complex suspenseful structures, making a reader work to find out whats happening.

Flagrant tinsel and glass, they looked strangely vulgar, but if, after the first queer shock of them, she found herself taking them up, it was for the very proof, never yet so distinct to her, of a far-off faded story. An honest widowed cleric with a small son and a large sense of Shakespeare had, on a brave latitutde of habit as well as of taste--since it implied his having in very fact dropped deep into the 'pit'--conceived for an obscure actress, several years older than himself, an admiration of which the prompt offer of his reverend name and hortatory hand was the sufficiently candid sign. The response had perhaps, in those dim years, in the way of eccentricity, even bettered the proposal, and Charlotte, turning the tale over, had long since drawn from it a measure of career renounced by the undistinguished comedienne--doubtless also tragic, or perhaps pantomimic, at a pinch--of her late uncle's dreams. (p 85)

The first sentence of this passage begins with an eerie echo of the sentence before "flagrant tinsel and glass." This eerie tone is continued through the sentence; they tip off the reader that there is, in fact, a "far-off faded story." But to get to this first period, the reader is held up by suspensful phrases and commas: "but if," "after the first queer shock of them," "never yet so distinct to her."

Although these are all interruptions to the sentence, they do not necessarily read as interruptions; on the contrary, the sentences in this story as a whole flow out very naturally in a consistent, archaic tone. (this story was, after all, published in 1899)

The second sentence of this passage is equally suspenseful and even longer in length. The action of the sentence does not appear until after two lengthy interruptions (a noun phrase and a dashed off clause). The second half of this sentence is worded in such a way that a reader (especially a modern one) must re-read it to understand that he fell in love with an older woman and liked her so much he almost immediately asked her to marry him. James' archaic vocabulary and wording are, indeed, suspenseful here because they are not straightforward and rather passive. Words like "conceived" and "hortatory" are not of this era, but nonetheless would have added to the story's archaic, high style in 1899 and certainly do now.

Again, the third sentence is consistently interrupts itself and the action of the sentence is held off until after two phrases ("in those dim years," and "in the way of eccentricity"). The second half of this sentence is very well constructed and the rhythm of it even seems to mimic the rhythm and manner of Charlotte's thoughts: "and Charlotte, turning the tale over, had long since drawn from it a measure of career renounced by the undistinguished comedienne--doubtless also tragic, or perhaps pantomimic, at a pinch--of her late uncle's dreams." The musings put into em-dashes could very well be her turning thoughts at that moment.

This synchronised rhythm between Charlotte's thoughts and the parallel information James gives the reader puts both Charlotte and the reader on the same plane. Neither of them know the full the story and both want to find out.

the birds and the bees according to Montaigne.

Montaigne's essay "On Some Lines of Virgil" is hardly about Virgil. Sure, he throws in some Virgil quotes, but the essay is not about the quotes--the quotes can be ignored, and by modern readers who can't read latin (I can barely read it with three years of latin), they are guarenteed to be ignored. No, the essay itself is about sex, and Montaigne reminiscing about his days as a bachelor.

Montaigne writes in hypotaxis, but he uses complex and suspenseful sentences throughout this essay. He conceals the content of his sentences by adding and interrupting his sentences with either one clause or many, many clauses after a simple sentence: " Man, says Aristotle, must approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of reason. " (pg 7)

and: "The bounty of ladies is too profuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire; to evade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Plato take in their laws." (pg 10)

Also check out this massive sentence:

Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health, such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me withal; that fire of sprightliness and gayety darts into the mind flashes that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.

Without clauses, lists, and other interruptions, this is what the simple version of this sentence looks like: "Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the extraordinary emotions of the soul...they have not attributed a part to health."

I think this structure works with the content of Montaigne's essay rather well--it is long winded and the extra clauses of information add to humor of the piece. It does, however, make it difficult and exhausting to read, especially from a modern standpoint. Which, I think, is a shame because Montaigne is brilliant. The exhaustive structure of this piece actually seems to wind down towards the end, and even a little earlier in the essay, his sentences are varied between the short, medium, and long (though still mostly long).

He concludes with this paragraph, which is still full of syntactical interruptions, but less than usual:

I say that males and females are cast in the same mold, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction between their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex than to excuse the other; `tis according to the saying "The Pot and the Kettle." (pg 39)

The structure as a whole of this essay is rather odd, though. It takes Montaigne a good five pages to get to his actual "subject." I think it does a have a structure, just a very wide and patchy one.

baby shoes and manifestos

From the Communist Manifesto:

"We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage labor, and which cannot increase except upon conditions of begetting a new supply of wage labor for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labor."

Marx and Engels use several modes of persuasion in this passage from the Manifesto. They use a tongue-in-cheek tone, making fun of those that say there is such a thing as private property. "Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property!"

They also ask questions. These questions add to the tongue-in-cheek tone, but also force readers to question their own views. Moreover, these questions add to the momentum of the sentence that follows afterward. Marx and Engels use questions twice in this passage to reiterate their points: "Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily."

"But does wage labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage labor, and which cannot increase except upon conditions of begetting a new supply of wage labor for fresh exploitation."

Ernest Hemingway: Baby Shoes

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

This single sentence is direct; it's an advertisement, short and to the point. Even the rhythm is curt and choppy. For sale--stop--baby shoes--pause--never worn. The "never worn" is either an afterthought or the sentences climax.

In its curt directness, this sentence by itself is mysterious and lets a reader guess at its background. Whose baby shoes are these? why are they never worn? Are they never worn because a baby died? Or did the child just skip a shoe size because he grew too fast? Was the family rich with too many shoes for their baby?

The odd twist to this sentence is the last phrase "never worn." Without those two words, the sentence would be a novel shoe advertisement. The "never" adds a kind of brooding tone to the sentence; as does "worn." "Worn" implies life or activity, thus wear and tear. But these baby shoes were NEVER worn.

Reefy

Sherwood Anderson is passive, a little vague, and decidedly weird. Weird for 1919, anyway. And eccentric for Winesburg, Ohio, I might add.
His style is, like I said, very passive, but only so because Anderson tells the story in past tense. Also I think the passivity adds to the stories' tone of an old man creaking in and out of bed to write down his half dreams. The tone is slow, but like the youth inside the old man, the story itself is undisciplined and modern. I would also like to point out that Anderson switches from strict third person to a bit of first person smack dab in the middle of this story. Suddenly the old man writer is not just a story, Anderson knows him. And, I get the strange feeling, Anderson possibly is him (though looking at his age at the time this was published--43--he isn't terribly old). Then! In the second to last paragraph, he throws in some second person! Just for fun, obviously.
This story as a whole would make a great 2-D early Disney cartoon short, I think. The colors of the Grotesques in the old man's dream would be spectacular all drawn or painted out.

Both Anderson stories, however, seem to have morals at their ends. These are the bare bones of the morals I picked up on, anyway: in "Book of the Grotesque" it is ' Truth is beautiful, but it makes people grotesque.' And in "Paper Pills" (whose title I don't particularly fancy) it is 'sweet beauty can come from unexpected, imperfection.'

Simple Hem

"Hills Like White Elephants" is simply typical Hemingway. The rhythm, the diction, the tone, the drinking in the hot, hot sun--it's all so perfectly Hem. Even Hemingway himself knows this. The girl says "'I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?'" Yes, that is all one does in a Hem story.

That being said, this story, like any other Hem story is low and informal. His sentences are abrupt and detached, and his dialogue is simple. Not every writer can pull off this style in short stories, though, I think. Hemingway somehow manages to sew his own voice into this simplistic style and can get away with it.

The majority of this story is told in dialogue. The few lines that are descriptive of the surroundings are very straight forward: "The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads." Hemingway doesn't bother with flowery, decorative language to describe; instead, he relies on the reader's imagination and the actual objects and surroundings he describes to speak for themselves. "The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table." This one simple sentence creates an entire setting. Each word serves a purpose and adds to the sentence--Hem does not throw around his words lightly.

Perhaps this is why Hemingway is so successful as a writer with such a terse style--he uses his few words well. They are specifically functional and always add something to the story. Other writers may write simplistically, but perhaps they are not as efficient with their words. Lets look a slightly longer description:

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies.

The first sentence "The hills...were long and white," is a pretty basic sentence (there is a subject "hills," prepostional phrase 1 "across the valley" followed by prepositional phrase 2 "of the Ebro," verb "were," and adverbial subject complements "long and white") and in its simplicity, it singlehandedly creates the story's setting. In the next couple of sentences, Hemingway builds on this first sentence and cuts a small, square picture to set his characters in. "There was no shade and no trees"--it was warm and bright, and he adds in the one side note about the "curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door" because he will utilize it later on (when Jig wants to try to the drink it advertises.) Even though this curtain will later serve a purpose, he gives an immediate purpose: "to keep out flies."


Here's another Hemingway snippet:
"He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights."

And this is this same snippet written in a higher, wordier style:

"The American said nothing in response to her, but looked down toward the suitcases he had laid against the stone wall of the station. Labels from all the hotels they had previously stayed at in the last year were glued onto the sides, irrevocable stamps marking their past."

bleeeegggghhhh

"Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You" was entertaining--slightly horrifying, but entertaining just the same.

I think Sister Mary Ignatius is a rather predictable character. I couldn't help thinking of her as Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter. She acts moral and pious and kind, but beneath her habit, she is simply cruel. This is obvious from her first lines, " First there is the earth. Near the earth is the sun, and also nearby is the moon. (Sister smiles at the audience, and checks to make sure they have followed what she has said.)" The true heartless flesh of her character comes out little by little and, I think, is completely out in the open during her "Bleeeghhh" speech.

Durang's style is very controlled; from his stage directions to the dialogue between characters, everything is overtly intentional. I can imagine Durang combed through every word of this play until it was exact. "This is Thomas, he is seven years old and in the second grade of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow School," (382) Sister says, introducing the little boy (for whom we later see she has implied pedophiliac sentiments). "Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow School" is obviously not just a jab at the ridiculous names of Catholic schools; no, here Durang began to introduce the dominant tone of the play: Sister Mary and the Catholic Church are a miserable crew and make everyone else miserable.

Just as Sister's true colors are slowly revealed, so is Durang's message. Little intentional jokes are strewn throughout the dialogue and Sister's monologues. Ie: "then just dare to feel sorry for the children lining up outside of school" and "My father was big and ugly, my mother had a nasty disposition and didn't like me; and there were twenty-six of us. It took three hours just to wash the dishes, but Christ hung on that cross for three hours and He never complained." (384)--hilarious. Durang distributes similar comments rather sparsely in the beginning of the play. They are folded into Sister's more factual side of her lecture: "Venial sin is the less serious kind, like if you tell a small lie to your parents, or when you take the Lord's name in vain when you break your thumb with a hammer, or when you kick a barking dog." (385) (What a subtly great punch line. Notice how Durang shortly suspends this sentence).

But as the plot climaxes, every sentence becomes sardonic and direct:

Sister: "Jesus is going to throw up....Bleeeeeeeeeeeeggghhhh. You make me want to 'bleeeeegghhhh.' (To all four sutdents, angry.) Didn't any of you listen to me when I was teaching you? What were you all doing???...There is the universe, created by God. Eve ate the apple, man got original sin..."(402)

In the final lines, Durang holds nothing back and just lets the audience have it:

(Sister shoots Gary dead. Then throws her arms in the air for joy.)

Sister: (Triumphant.) "I have sent him to heaven!...I'm not really within the letter of the law shooting Gary like this. But really if he did make a good confession, I have sent him straight to heaven and eternal, blissful happiness. And I"m afraid otherwise he would have ended up in hell. I think Christ will allow me this little dispensation from the letter of the law, but I'll go to confession later today, just to be sure."

I think the entirety of the play actually rather mirrors an argument: it starts out in normal, soft voices, arguing a point and ends screaming and inches from your face. Perhaps it can be said that this play is, in fact, the illustration Durang's argument with the Church.

history is a nightmare from which i am trying to awake.

Faulkner's story is frightening and awful.

He spins the story between two ledges, Ms. Minnie and the barber. That is, between these two characters, the two halves of the story come together. Minnie's side probably could've been done without--the barber's experience is awful enough on its own and readers can easily draw up Minnie's character without being told. But Minnie's insanity reinforces the barber's insistence that Will Mayes didn't do it and thus Faulkener uses her well.

As a matter of fact, Faulkener does a lot of things well in this story. The dialogue propels the story and adds to the tension already in the story's tone. The characters argue and cut each other off, creating a great sense of conflict and upset.

What I'd mainly like to look at, however, is Faulkner's good sentences. He uses a lot of extended phrases to drag out his sentences. The whole of the story, however, is punctuated with much shorter sentences; this adds to the kick of the story and also moves it forward.

Look at the very first paragraph--The first sentence is a mixture of brilliant metaphor, simile, and syntactic suspense: " 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." The phrase "aftermath of sixty-two rainless days" is specific and acts as the suspensive element of the sentence.

The next sentence is really a fragment and its quickness punctuates the first and third sentences. It is conversational--just a half thought the narrator mutters to himself. "Something about Miss Minnie Cooper and a Negro."

The third sentence, however, is the grand finale of the paragraph: "Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them, gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what had happened." How brilliantly long and suspensive.

What gives this sentence its suspense, however, is the great three line noun phrase at its center: "gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors." Without this suspense, the sentence would simply read "Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them knew exactly what had happened." But Faulkner, of course, won't give up his plot line so easily. This sentence is rather parallel to a rumor in the flesh--it rolls on for longer than it should and finally ends with no one really knowing "exactly what happened."

Another great paragraph is the description of McLendon a little further down into the story. "The screen door crashed open. A man stood in the floor, his feet apart and his heavy-set body poised easily. His white shirt was open at the throat; he wore a felt hat. His hot, bold glance swept the group. His name was McLendon. He had commanded troops at the front in France and had been decorated for valor." The sentences here are short and choppy, the rhythm resembles the pulsing vein I imagine was visibly throbbing on McLendon's red temple at that moment. Each quick sentence is out of breath, much like the tone of the story at this point. The youth is raving and the whole barber shop is upset.

The last sentence of this paragraph is interesting: "He had commanded troops at the front...and had been decorated for valor." Notice it is the only sentence in this paragraph that is explicitly passive. Its information, however, also tells something of McLendon's character--this great, crashing, valiant, white man is overbearing, probably brutish, and implicitly bloodthirsty. That's how I immediately pictured him, anyway.

A Sonatina

"Stranger in the Village" is like one of those classical sonatinas with multiple movements within the body of the piece.

Baldwin has one particular intent for his essay, but he seems to move through it in different stages with different tones. The first movement is quiet and explanatory. His sentences are clean, but rather choppy in rhythm. He says what he must for the sake of background, setting the reader up for the crescendo into the next movement: the village's reaction to him. The anger mounts in his tone--but only just so--and the reader can slowly feel Baldwin's veins start to pulse. --piano forte.

This is most evident when he talks about the American Negro's first "education"--that is, to "make people 'like' him." The "smile-and-the-world-smiles-with-you" routine did not work in Switzerland because "My smile was simply another unheard-of phenomenon which allowed them to see my teeth--they did not really see my smile and began to think that, should I take to snarling, no one would notice any difference." He goes on to say "there was yet no suggestion that I was human: I was simply a living a wonder." The tone of this sentence is layered with a matter of fact cover, yet obvious bitter undertones.

I think one way Baldwin navigates the turbulent political waters so well in this piece is through such sentence tone layering. A reader cannot deny the matter of fact cover--he is merely stating how the villagers' words and actions made him feel. Who are we to contest with that? Because he is simultaneously relating emotion, however, readers can easily pick up on his anger. Moreover, in sentences like "I knew that they did not mean to be unkind, and I know it now..." Baldwin immediately diffuses the reader's reaction to whatever it is he is going to say next. Again, Baldwin uses this tactic a few sentences later: "The children who shout Neger! have no way of knowing the eachoes this sound raises in me." He ends this diffusing paragraph with "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." Fortissimo.

The third movement quickly follows this statement and is not quiet in the least. Baldwin's bitterness is no longer an undertone as this movement progresses. --Mezzo forte--He is blatant and angry and throws out those harsh words "white man," "black man," our "PC" culture hates to hear and say. But Baldwin gets away with it because, again, he is describing his emotion, his--specific, though universal--experience with the reader. The sentence "I thought of white men arriving for the first time in an African village, astounded populace touching their hair and marveling at the color of their skin" prefaces the real meat of this movement: Baldwin's critique of the white man's attitude towards everyone and everything different from himself. Yet once again, Baldwin diffuses the explosive he threw over before it goes off. In the middle of accusing whites of having a superiority complex, he throws in a meek "whereas I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls me..." --Sforzando paino--The rest of this sentence is also explosive, but that beginning little "whereas I" conjures up empathy and makes the reader immediately side with Baldwin.

Through this description of Switzerland's naive villagers shouting "Neger!" at him--not unkindly, though--Baldwin makes a switch about half way through the essay. He crosses that "dreadful abyss" between the astonishment and naivety of Switzerland and the cruel, prejudice of America. --Fortissmo!-- He says "the abyss is experience, the American experience." This charged clause, however, is buried within the paragraph, allowing Baldwin to explain himself and again douse out the fuse.

This, I think, is his most blatant stylistic tactic--I'm sure there are many more I haven't yet picked up on--and probably his most effective. It is not as padded as a politician's speech, or apology for something crass or horrific, yet it is cushy with emotion. Emotion drives this essay, yet it also acts as a political airbag, allowing Baldwin to write about an objective topic subjectively.

IF ONLY

This is not my first time reading Joan Didion's "Goodbye To All That"--I read it once before in my freshman writing class--and I must admit I had almost identical reactions to it both times. Half of me wants to love Didion and her long, rambling sentences, yet the other half of me resents her because I cannot do what she can. The tone of this piece always gets to me, as well. I cannot relate to her homesickness and consistent bitterness towards New York.

That being said, Didion immediately sets the tone and the stage for her story of nostalgia in the very first sentence of the piece: "It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends." Right away the tone of "If only I knew then what I know now" appears and hangs over the story. Moreover, the words "harder to see the ends" instantly implies that this is a story of her past, and not necessarily one she likes. The following sentence appropriately adds to the tension already set by the first sentence. In fact, it entrenches us in her bitterness:

I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when new york began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.

This massive four line sentence hands the reader Didion's bitterness towards these five blind years in New York. The hard "c" alliteration/assonance consistently strewn throughout the sentence adds to its bite. We feel the bite throughout the entirety of this excerpt because it left red marks on our hands it was so sharp.

At the end of the first paragraph, Didion says,

I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all avidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.

In this final and running sentence, Didion extends herself and her own maturing experience to the general world around her. Surely everyone else must and does go what she went through. She sees now that she was not the only one. This realisation is carried out throughout the story right until the very end.

Didion is actually very good at sticking to her themes. She is always connecting her story back to into itself and the structure of this is very admirable. In the second paragraph she says "was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was." This connects easily back to the end of the first paragraph.

Also in the second paragraph I noticed that in the first sentence "Of course it might have been some other city had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco..." she repeats the word "different" and though it isn't what Lanham would call "compulsive repetition" necessarily, it is noticeable and iterates her point well.

In this story Didion is continually dragging us into her blind past and then just as quickly dragging us back out of it into her all-knowing present. She says,

All I could do during those years was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

In this sentence, Didion uses her long-winded, nostalgic sentence to effectively contrast with the shorter sentence and snap us back into the reality of the present.

When she talks about her first year in the city when she was "late to meet someone but stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peace and stood on the corner eating it" I find that passage to be the most potent and powerful of the whole story. She could "taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on [her] legs and [she] could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and [she] knew it would cost something sooner or later..." I live this memory with her every time I read it because somehow it comes to life with all the senses of that moment described.

She goes on to say that she felt that way because she did not belong there on Lexington Avenue, "but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs....At that time making a living seemed a game to me, with arbitrary but quite inflexible rules." I connect these two distant sentences from the same paragraph because they are stated with a sense and tone of the impending future's reality. The whole piece is written like this, as I've said before. But it is these two sentences that she returns to in particular at the end of the piece and we finally learn what her learned. She did have to pay the costs, things were revocable and not everything was within her reach. And, more significantly, as the years went by, the Upper East Side truly made her sick. She was sick with lust for money--making a living was no longer a game, but a necessity. Didion expresses this very well. Again, this is where she extends herself and her experience from the specific to the general. Everyone realises what she realises eventually. I think despite the fact that she admits this the whole time, she is always surprised by it.

what it must feel like to have malaria.

This chapter of The Bell Jar moves slow. Ordinary movements and mundane days are recorded methodically because there is really just nothing else going on in Esther's world. I haven't read all of The Bell Jar, but this chapter truly was like living a slow, slurred summer day with nothing to do. As tired is this chapter is, though, it does contain a great deal of foreshadowing and implications of Esther's emotional instability.

The solitary line on the first page "What a hotchpotch the world was!" immediately implies several things: Esther is unfamiliar with the world around her, the unfamiliarity annoys and confuses her and she cannot be bothered with it. "Hotchpotch" is such an odd word, I think, and calls to mind a scrambled mess of thread that cannot be untangled. It is just impossible to solve. A few paragraphs further down, Esther describes the two diagonal lines of blood she's left dried on her cheeks. This makes me think she does not want to belong in the "hotchpotch" world and will make no attempt to. She says, "I didn't really see why people should look at me," but she knows why and I believe she relished the fact that they did. She wanted to set herself apart.

(Before I go on, let me just say that I cannot stand Plath's use of descriptive verbs. She overwrites dialogue like "the conductor bawled," and excessively uses descriptive action like "negotiated the long aisle." It's unnecessary and almost sounds like something you might find written by a freshman in a college writing class.)

As the chapter progresses, Esther further disembodies herself from her actions. When Judy calls and encourages her to go through with her summer plans, despite being rejected by the writing program, Esther cannot say yes. She cannot make herself do what she knows will potentially make her happy. Little by little, she loses control over her will: "I could just about afford it. But the hollow voice said, 'You'd better count me out.'...The minute I hung up, I knew I should have said I would come...I reached for the receiver. My hand advanced a few inches then retreated and fell limp. I forced it toward the receiver again, but again it stopped short, as if it had collided with a pane of glass." She cancels her registration for summer classes at the college with a "zombie voice" that is not really her own.

Esther is indecisive and uncommitted to the few decisions she does try to make. She says she won't live in the same house as her mother for more than a week, yet she stays. She tries to write a novel, but puts it on hold because she decides she needs more experience. She decides to switch majors, learn short hand, write her thesis, and maybe go to Germany; but she does none of these things. She has no control over her will or her wants, because her depression has taken her over. A "zombie" of a person replaces her, choking her off.

This chapter is thick and appropriately zombielike--every minute action of Esther's is recorded dutifully. Plath makes the reader aware of each crawling moment through Esther's short, methodical ramblings of thought and action. Her sentences are statements and short, tired descriptions. Thus the reader moves as Esther moves (slow and deliberate) and thinks with her (indecisively and indefinitely).

there must be an ebb.

I've already expressed my love for DH Lawrence in previous posts and his short story "The Rocking Horse Winner" is a prime example of why I love him so much.

Just look at the first two sentences of the story: "There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust." The first sentence sounds like the beginning of a bedtime story my dad would make up when I was a tiny tot. It is a classic story beginning: "There once was a woman who had no luck." I appreciate that Lawrence treats his story AS a story immediately.

Next, read these first two sentences aloud. They have an excellent rhythm and even a slant rhyme in "luck" and "dust." Its very poetic.

The story as a whole is conscious of itself as a story--I feel that Lawrence does this intentionally, much like Rushdie does with his stories--and the first paragraph lays out the map of this story. It touches on several pillars of the story: luck and the mother's lack thereof, the hardness in her heart towards her children, and how her eyes and her childrens' betrayed their true feelings for one another. The characters are constantly striving for luck throughout, especially Paul. We see the mother's heart truly turn cold and hard in her guilt and anxiety for Paul and his madness over luck. And finally, it is Paul's eyes that Lawrence describes so intently, while the boy is mad. It is his eyes that make his mother finally notice something is terribly wrong:

"I've got to know for the Derby! I've got to know for the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.

His mother noticed how overwrought he was.

'You'd better go to the seaside. Wouldn't you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think you'd better,' she said, looking down at him anxiously, her heart curiously heavy because of him.

But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes...

Lawrence writes in these details in the beginning, but lets the story flesh them out and carry their dense meanings.

The "whisper" of the house is another example of Lawrence's effective use of symbols in the story. At first I thought the whisper for "more money!" was just a one time metaphor, but the whispers, in fact, turned out not just to be a striking metaphor of the mother's greed, but a vital part of the story. Lawrence is very intentional and these symbols and themes hardly have a single meaning or implication; instead, they span the story and give it depth.

get me an aspirin.

This is my third time--at least--reading this piece by Orwell. And every time I read it, I cannot help but agree with him more emphatically than the last (about most writers today, that is). Orwell wins me over every time I read this piece because, after reading those examples of pretentious and plain bad writing, I never want to write pretentiously or be unclear again. In fact, the most persuasive element of Orwell's piece is his portrayal of bad writers and their literary laziness. I don't want to be one of those writers who use metaphors "without knowledge of their meaning" and mix "incompatible metaphors," obviously not interested in what I'm saying. Orwell makes me question my writing.

Do I save myself the trouble of picking out appropriate words just to "pad a sentence with extra syllables [to] give it an appearance of symmetry?"

Am I a pretentious writer, using words I don't really know how to use?

Lord, I hope not. This is why I do my best to stick to his rules (my old politics professor actually told us that if we didn't stick to Orwell's six rules in our term papers, he would personally find us and hand us back our D-grade papers).

One point Orwell makes (and I think this is the most important point of the piece) is that if "thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Lazy writing indicates lazy thinkers. I don't want to be a lazy thinker, nor do I want my political leaders to be lazy thinkers. But, as Orwell said, writing with ready-made phrases and big words is tempting because it is can be done without truly thinking yet still sound intelligent. He says (I particularly enjoyed this) that using this prepackaged style of writing is a "continuous temptation" for writers--it is like having "a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow." Why go through the headache of thinking when you can numb it out with cliche and pretension? How ingenious.

a shoulder glance

Here is a quick flashback of the last five Lanham chapters on close reading:

The introduction introduces us to the "C-B-S" theory of prose. That is, prose build around the three central values of Clarity, Brevity, and Sincerity. Lanham says that "the theory argues that prose ought to be maximally transparent and minimally self-conscious, never seen and never noticed." But if you follow this theory to its full extent, you will find that your writing is Clearly Boring, Sorry.

In chapter one, Lanham differentiates between the noun and verb styles. Noun style is based on, well, nouns and is "statis," or more passive. The verbs in a noun-style sentence sink into the nouns and are further covered in layers of monotonous prepositional phrases. Verb style, however, is based on action and its verbs are central in the sentence.

In chapter two, Lanham talks about parataxis and hypotaxis, the two modes of how a writer connects the elements of his sentences. Parataxis is a style that tells its readers what/how to think via grammar (ie: "I came, I saw, I conquered." the style is direct and often pattern-like). Within parataxis, we see a common pattern of anaphora, a pattern of similar sentence openings. (ie: Hemingway's "I," "we," and "noun+was" openers). It creates a rhythm and heightens the intensity of its message. Hypotaxis, on the other hand, lets its readers know how thinks rank and what derives from what. It is wordier, thus less intense in style and a little less direct than parataxis. Nonetheless, it is very logical and reasoned because it follows assertion with supporting information. Paratactic comes a little more natural to write.

Paratactic style also encourages, as we see in Hemingway, an Asyndetic style--a style without connecting words (this also heightens intensity and repetition of words). Polysyndetic style, on the other hand, has a lot of connections (it is usually used in hypotactic sentences). It is fairly complex and informal.

Chapter three discusses the Periodic and Running styles. Periodic style is conscious of its organisation and often used by politicians (not Ike!) or writers trying to convey a specific message. If you write in the periodic style, you have control over your sentences, how they rank, and you have an idea where you are going specifically. Running style is more conversational and loose as a style. It is a style that literally runs without necessarily having a specific destination. The main difference between these two styles, however, is time reference. Running style is more present--things happen as they want to, not as the writer has constructed them. As Lanham says, "circumstances call the tune." Periodic style is the opposite--it has a specific beginning, middle, and end. It is careful, organised, and often patterned.

Finally, Chapter five (yes, we skipped chapter four) talks about my favorite subject: voiced and unvoiced styles. I understood this chapter best because voice is what I notice most in a piece, as opposed to its particular grammar styles. Lanham scolds the literary world and its readers for the practice of silent-reading. Yes, its faster, but it takes away from the tone of voice in a piece of literature. The more unspeakable, or toneless, the prose, the more we speed-read it. That's not good! Voiceless prose is "unworkable." It's boring, it's dull and it deserves to be sped over. But prose was not meant to be voiceless. Voice can stress central words and better convey the message of a piece. Voice and tone can also change the meaning/intent of writing or just cushion that intent, as Lanham demonstrated in President Eisenhower's letter to his general. Finally, Lanham and I agree that prose is meant to be performed. How can one perform prose if it has no voice? Voice is the personality a writer gives her prose and it is a vital ingredient in good writing.

Thank you and goodnight.

the banshee and the holy ghost

Four distinct types of sentences (all taken from Joyce's Grace):

Simple: "A thin stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth."

"The gentlemen began to talk of the accident."

Compound: "The manager said something about a hospital and some of the bystanders gave advice."

"The three men left the bar and the crowd sifted through the doors into the laneway."

Complex: "The man, without answering, began to twirl the ends of his moustache." and "While the point was being debated a tall agile gentleman of fair complexion, wearing a long yellow ulster, came from the far end of the bar."

Compound-Complex: "Mr Kernan was hoisted on to the car and, while Mr Power was giving directions to the carman, he expressed his gratitude to the young man and regretted that they could not have a little drink together."

Grace is a story. Joyce doesn't try to bother us with complex syntactical styles, he just tells Kernan's story. This story is definitely written in verb-style--the sentences are based on action and contain plenty of verbs. Take a look at a few sentences from the opening paragraph of Grace: "He lay curled up at the foot of the stairs down which he had fallen." And "His eyes were closed and he breathed with a grunting noise." The concentration of the sentence is all on the action.

Moreover, the style of this story is written in periodic parataxis, peppered with a few sentences that lean hypotactic. Joyce sews independent and dependent clauses together to make his longer sentences and then punctuates those with an a shorter, one clause sentence. Yet his parataxis is not painstakingly contrived or self-conscious like Hemingway's. Joyce simply lets the action and dialogue carry the weight of the story, not bothering us with syntax that may or not be allegorical. This allows for a straight reading of the story, for the story, with nothing looming in the background that we have to tackle later.

For example, in the following paragraph, all we are concerned with when reading is the action of the story. We just want to know what the hell happened to Mr Kernan and the bloody details of the present state of his mouth:

The other leaned over the wheel of the car and peered into Mr Kernana's mouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the shell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr Kernan opened obediently. The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and from the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been bitten off. The match was blown out.

Joyce uses a lot of straightforward clauses to string the story along. The majority of these clauses are independent and the ones that are dependent are not some annoying parenthetical side note that dependent clauses often are. Joyce's voice in this passage (and in the story in general) is rather detached. Again, the main concern here is just telling the story, not sidetracking the reader with added the narrator's voice. But Joyce doesn't need to have a voice in this story--the action does all the talking. The verbs and adjectives Joyce picked to describe the examination of Mr Kernan's injury are vivid and tangible without trying to be. Look again at these first two sentences: "The other leaned over the wheel of the car and peered into Mr Kernana's mouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the shell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr Kernan opened obediently. " Not only are the prepositional phrases here simple, they are extremely telling and simply paint the story's image in the reader's mind.

Moreover, Joyce uses a repetition and a bit of alliteration, but he is not forward about it. This is a prose story, not a poem or prose that tries too hard. He repeats "mouth" and "peered" and alliterates "s" (see, struck, sheltering, shell, swaying). In the next two sentences he alliterates further with combined sounds of hard and soft of "b", "t", and "th" : "The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and from the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been bitten off. The match was blown out." The simplicity of this style makes the story so powerful, and I appreciate Joyce for that.