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.