...from a writer I greatly admire, David Rakoff. The book is "Half Empty":
Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness — a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest Self which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of a kitchen chair — then this confirmation that you have triumphed again and managed to gull yet another mark, except this time it was the one person you’d hoped might be immune to your ever-creakier, puddle-shallow, sideshow-barker variation on “adorable,” even though you’d been launching this campaign weekly with a single-minded concentration from day one… well, it conjures up feelings that are best described as mixed, to say the least.
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I thought you were gonna say, "You know I have this Gatsby hang-up . . ." ha, ha. But you didn't.
Now that's a good sentence!
"Now that's a good sentence!"
I trust you've diagrammed it.
Trust, but verify. Please don't hate me. I couldn't help myself. I couldn't resist. Also, don't you dare diagram me into your narrow boxes of grammatical rules and regulations. Oh, I fear I've done it again. I don't really mean it. I love you. I hope your brows aren't Mia Farrowed.
Uh... I was talking to Robert.
The "well, it" helps render the sentence smoothly readable. Otherwise, the suspension between subject (confirmation) and verb (conjures) would be too long. We're not Germans.
Other than the "well, it," I think it's grammatical, though.
A run-on worthy of William Faulkner.
Rackoff is a true genius. He is only 4'8" tall. But the mind that he talks with must be 10'tall.
Half Empty is read by David himself on Audible. He makes you laugh, cry and feel a cathartic release in every chapter.
tl;dr
He said "No comment."
Heh. Now THAT would be a fun sentence to assign my son for diagramming. Heck, it could be the final exam on the topic. Or, at least, a goal to strive to reach.
I just had my son read aloud that sentence. He made it all the way to the ellipsis before taking a breath and stumbled over only one word (melancholia) along the way. It's a start! LOL.
Those who live alone should keep a softball in the kitchen because, as Mr. Rakoff well observes, the back of a kitchen chair is not your friend.
Lame. Faulkner, but without the devilish hook at the end that, after sufficient exposure, makes reading Faulknerian sentences stir increasing anxiety and imagination as they uncoil and you wonder what fiendish twist lies at the end.
This one just ends with an uninteresting thud, and now I want my 1.8 seconds back. I wouldn't read another overstuffed sausage from the same author. This is just the verbal equivalent of lens flare overused.
I will confirm that I have mixed feelings about that sentence.
I haven't done sentence diagramming since 7th grade--which was sometime around the "summer of love," so no, I wouldn't remember how to diagram even the simplest of sentences today.
When we were children we used to do Christmas at my mother's house on Christmas Eve. Someone would drive us around to look at lights, and when we returned to her house, the presents would be there. One year, she choked on a chocolate truffle while we were gone, and she had to do that back of a chair move. Luckily she was successful.
Imagine children coming home to celebrate Christmas and finding their mother dead on the floor, killed by a Christmas treat!
That long winded sentence describes just about every comedian on this earth.
Shorter version- "Your smile is just a frown turned upside down."
I could absolutely see Chip Ahoy writing that sentence.
If you're a genius like Faulkner or Hemingway, you can break every rule in the Goddamn book.
Everyone else, not so much.
"I could absolutely see Chip Ahoy writing that sentence."
As a joke my friend, as a joke.
If you're a genius like Faulkner or Hemingway, you can break every rule in the Goddamn book.
Everyone else, not so much.
I am tempted to say, TL;DR but I did plough through it all.
His point could have been made in less than 1/4 the space. Maybe the function of the long sentence is to keep you thinking about the subject for two seconds rather than one half second.
Of course.
Of course. It's the style not the substance. If there is any substance. I can't understand what he's getting at.
Re: "you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of a kitchen chair "
Replace 'Heimlich maneuver' with 'the Michael Hutchence Rope Trick' and it might make more sense.
To David Carradine.
Musically, it's sort of like Chopin in some cases.
(So, shoot me: I like Chopin. Palladian, for one example, would so object to my appreciation of Chopin. Yet still I do like and appreciate Chopin. And also Palladian, among examples.)
"His point could have been made in less than 1/4 the space."
His point wasn't just to make his point, but to express it humorously and artfully. Writing is not just about the what but also the how.
Rackoff is an actor who happens to write too.
I think of Half Empty as dialogue in a one man play, not an instruction manual written for today's digital brainiacs.
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