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.