Atwater, however, was, since the end of a serious involvement some years prior, also all but celibate, and tended to be extremely keyed up and ambivalent in any type of sexually charged situation, which unless he was off base this increasingly was—which in retrospect was partly why, in the stormy enclosure of the rental car with the pulverizingly attractive Amber Moltke, he had committed one of the fundamental errors in soft news journalism: asking a centrally important question before he was certain just what answer would advance the interests of the piece.
March 3, 2018
1-minute workout in difficult reading.
I was a bit skeptical of Will Self's pitch for difficult reading — "some texts are clearly going to be a better jungle gym for the mind than others—and just as you never put on much muscle mass with a limp-wristed workout, so no one ever got smart by reading… Dan Brown" — but he was talking about slogging through whole books, preferably books written by him. Nevertheless, his pitch came back to me just now when I noticed a sentence I'd highlighted in my current reading ("Oblivion"). No need to spend hours in the intellectual jungle gym of an entire novel. I've got a perfect 1-minute — 1-sentence — workout for you. Seriously, time yourself (yourwillself) and get back to me about whether you've augmented your mental musculature (and had any fun along the way):
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112 comments:
27 seconds. Is that an opening sentence? A little convoluted, but Henry James it ain't.
God, but that's lousy writing. Bulwer-Lytton-worthy. It ought to be split into three sentences. Maybe four. Is that actually David Foster Wallace?
Elitist claptrap.
They attack popular and successful writers like Dan Brown for a reason.
They are populat and successful and these bow tie wearing Ivy League Mo's are not.
Less than 27 seconds here. Top 3 Brit public school education here, had to read hard shit, often in Latin. Try a similar chunk anywhere in Finnegans Wake.
Sorry I got lost on this:
"which unless he was off base this increasingly was—which in retrospect was partly why,"
Wretched, not worth the 32 seconds it took.
When one writes like this, one writes for one's self, not for one's reader. As they say where I come from, fuhgeddaboudid.
Not hard to follow, but would be clearer (and better) as multiple sentences.
Do children still diagram sentences in school? That one would be a nightmare to do.
Forget Atwater. Now try Awater:
"Read :
what it says is not what it says. It says :
‘O Mother, you will never wear the furs
you scrimped and scavenged every penny for,
and on my days off now I do not go
with flowers to the hospital; I take
the roses out to Cemetery Lane...’
This it says, and Awater’s countenance,
motionless and intent, shows his emotion."
Pick up anything Chesterton wrote.
45 seconds for me. Might have been delayed because I kept thinking about the Bullwer-Lytton contest.
I'm in the middle of Steven Pinker's book "The Language Instinct" now, and I just finished a section covering how the mind has to place down markers for unresolved phrases in all but the simplest sentences. Pinker does suggest that good writing involves not requiring too big a stack of these markers.
Flights of starlings have a way of flying which is theirs alone and seems as governed by uniform and regular tactics as a disciplined regiment would be, obeying a single leader's voice with precision. The starlings obey the voice of instinct, and their instinct leads them to bunch into the centre of the squad, while the speed of their flight bears them constantly beyond it; so that this multitude of birds thus united by a common tendency towards the same magnetic point, unceasingly coming and going, circulating and crisscrossing in all directions, forms a sort of highly agitated whirlpool whose whole mass, without following a fixed course seems to have a general wheeling movement round itself resulting from the particular circulatory motions appropriate to each of its parts, and whose centre, perpetually tending to expand but continually compressed, pushed back by the contrary stress of the surrounding lines bearing upon it, is constantly denser than any of these lines, which are themselves the denser the nearer they are to the centre. Despite this strange way of swirling, the starlings cleave through the ambient air at no less rare a speed and each second make precious, appreciable headway towards the end of their hardships and the goal of their pilgrimage.
Lautreamont
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
Is that actually David Foster Wallace?
I take it you've never read any DFW.
I made it through 3 chapters of Infinite Jest ( someone else's copy, so I stopped reading because I lost access to it ). Maybe 30 pages. Probably 5 sentences total. ( That might be a slight exaggeration. Or it might not. )
The form is the fun of it, if it's fun. If you're thinking he's just complicating it to be weird and kind of a dick, then it's powerfully annoying, but consider the possibility that he wants to annoy people like you. He wrote like that to amuse the people he wanted as his readers, and I have been challenged to enjoy his fiction (as, I've said, I enjoy his nonfiction). He worked very hard on sentences like that, and I am virtually certain he intended it to come off as very funny.
Anyway, can anyone rewrite that sentence so that it is much easier to read and is either: 1. makes a very interesting observation, or 2. reveals that the observation is actually quite dull?
There is 'difficult' reading and there is bad writing. This is simply the latter.
"Wretched, not worth the 32 seconds it took."
Did you understand every word of it? Perhaps if you took the full 60 seconds, you would have attained a higher level of mental musculature.
It's like in the gym. You should lift weights slowly, right? More benefit that way.
I say take the full 60 seconds and let that sentence be all you can be.
I like DFW, but I am no scholar on him, and yes, separated from any context, that sentence is kind of an abomination. I have never read Oblivion, but if you think that the sentence would be better off as three, and you might be right, the the guy's internal dialogue as characterization would be off limits to him. He would have to tell you about the guy's mind, not show you.
To tell you the revolting truth, my chief reaction to that sentence was a completely irrational desire to see a picture of Amber Moltke. As if she actually exists. As if I haven't seen a million pictures of attractive women. As if I won't see a million more. It gets really tiresome, having this great, big, pushable button connected directly to the need-to-know centers of my brain.
I got through the sentence in about 15 seconds, but it took me a half minute to fully decipher it, especially the part with "unless he was off-base this increasingly was". The problem I had with that part was that it wasn't clear to me that it was the situation being sexually charge that was increasingly apparent.
It's needlessly complicated. "It is a tale Told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
That sentence reminds me of the time I tried reading a book while high on an entire cannibis cookie I'd foolishly eaten. By the time I got to the end of a sentence, I'd forgotten what was at the beginning.
“Pulverizingly attractive” bothers me, I wonder what he is getting at there. I don’t have enough context. In Infinite Jest, there is a girl character called the PGOAT, prettiest girl of all time who considers her extreme beauty a disfigurement, since it creates distance with everybody around her. He probably resents the power her beauty creates over him, I am guessing, breaks him down as a man, reduces him. If it’s DFW, “pulverize” was used advisedly.
And “bad writing” does not mean “writing I don’t like.” In Infinite Jest, one character’s mother read to him from the OED every night, but I have to admit, in that first chapter of the book I was really considering putting it down a couple of times, but there were these incredible little passages that were mind-bending. Think of it as opera compared to the Beach Boys. Each has their audience, but you have to admit that there are passages in opera that are just astonishing to hear, even if the surrounding stuff is unremarkable. He takes chances sure, and sometimes he fails.
> Did you understand every word of it? Perhaps if you took the full 60 seconds, you would have attained a higher level of mental musculature.
Both every word AND all of them taken together.
> It's like in the gym. You should lift weights slowly, right? More benefit that way.
Uh. No. In the weight room the speed at which you lift is determined by your goals.
There is some evidence that you should do the *concentric* portion of the lift as fast as can be done safely and with good form (to train muscles for "explosive" movements) and the eccentric portion as slowly as possible.
Other movements, like clean and jerk or the snatch which admittedly are almost completely "concentric" muscle movements.
That sentence? Convoluted to be sure, but filled with the sort of emotional crap that makes it less an "intellectual" puzzle and more of a (rather pointless) exercise in syntactical masturbation.
Try this:
“Our rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own infantilism on our institutions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn, they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic limitations. The vicious circle is completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our institutions. And so it goes, on and on.”
― Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics
It's worth considering that our Gracious Hostess has some training in winkling out meaning from Legal texts. It may have influenced her taste in literature.
Billy Obvious, Your Alfred Korzybski quote is just a statement of what this blog is all about. It’s as true as anything can be, which is why I am seriously considering emigrating to a country I like, but don’t love, and which doesn’t headline the TV with American news every day.
I read it rather easily, but then I've read a lot of Wallace, so I usually hear the rhythms; evidently I have developed my Wallace muscle.
That said, the sentence is not one of his best, and probably in his lower quantile.
He also had a way with simpler sentences:
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
The Germans have a word for this.
That wasn't so hard.
I think any page of Faulkner is more headache-inducing than that.
Here is a passage from OLD MASTERS, a late novel by (the late) Thomas Bernhard. It is a great book! (This is made up of a series of short sentences, but Bernhard can also carry on at great length with single, serpentine sentences.
"The art historians are the real wreckers of art, Reger said. The art historians twaddle so long about art until they have killed it with their twaddle. Art is killed by the twaddle of the art historians. My God, I often think, sitting here on the settee while the art historians are driving their helpless flocks past me, what a pity about all these people who have all art driven out of them, driven out of them for good, by these very art historians. The art historians’ trade is the vilest trade there is, and a twaddling art historian, but then there are only twaddling art historians, deserves to be chased out with a whip, chased out of the world of art, Reger said, all art historians deserve to be chased out of the world of art, because art historians are the real wreckers of art and we should not allow art to be wrecked by the art historians who are really art wreckers.
Listening to an art historian we feel sick, he said, by listening to an art historian we see the art he is twaddling about being ruined, with the twaddle of the art historian art shrivels and is ruined. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands of art historians wreck art by their twaddle and ruin it, he said. The art historians are the real killers of art, if we listen to an art historian we participate in the wrecking of art, wherever an art historian appears art is wrecked, that is the truth."
That sentence? Convoluted to be sure, but filled with the sort of emotional crap that makes it less an “intellectual" puzzle and more of a (rather pointless) exercise in syntactical masturbation.
“Masturbation.... can be fuuun...” - Hair (The musical.)
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
That’s a good one. I liked one that went something like “What determines the greatness of a man is what he can face without running away screaming.” Of course DFW committed suicide.
(rather pointless)
Proving a negative, as I am sure you know, but may not have groked, is a tall order.
Tim in Vermont @11:43 AM:
What country that you like but don't love are you considering immigrating to?
“Pulverizingly attractive” bothers me, I wonder what he is getting at there
Ball buster
Since the end of a serious involvement some years prior, Atwater was all but celibate.
He tended to be extremely keyed up and ambivalent in any type of sexually charged situation, which (unless he was off base) this increasingly was.
In retrospect, this was partly why, in the stormy enclosure of the rental car with the pulverizingly attractive Amber Moltke, he had committed one of the fundamental errors in soft news journalism:
asking a centrally important question before he was certain just what answer would advance the interests of the piece.
Keeping most of the words, many of which could probably still be edited out without real loss.
"Pulverizingly attractive" just sounds wrong, the sort of mistake a freshman armed with a thesaurus would make.
Ann Althouse said...
The form is the fun of it, if it's fun.
I think this is the key. There are people who really enjoy crossword puzzles, and get a feeling of satisfaction each time they figure out a tricky clue. There are people who really enjoy Sudoku, who get a feeling of satisfaction each time they reason out a sub-section of the puzzle.
And there are people who enjoy these sorts of complex sentences, and get a feeling of satisfaction as each clause is completed and each reference is resolved. And it is certainly a skill that can be developed, just like crosswords or Sudoku, so that the more you read, the less effort it takes. But if you're not the sort of person who finds those things rewarding, then it just feels unnecessarily tiring. More practice would make it less tiring, but still unrewarding.
That sentence reminded me of my experience with the GRE. Test takers were given a passage written in similar complex prose. I decided to select the answers that were written in the most verbose, complex, incoherent prose. At the time, I said to myself that I would select the answers that most resembled sociology-speak. As my GRE-Verbal was 5 points higher than my SAT-Verbal, and I was a STEM major who had taken as few non-STEM courses as possible, I believe I made the correct choices.
I am reminded of what my process design professor directed us to do: "Make it brief, concise, and to the point." That is also good advice for writers. Unfortunately, some writers don't follow that advice.
This kind of sentence structure was the standard form of verbal public communication in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, understood by the educated and the uneducated alike. Pro tip: reading the sentence aloud makes comprehension far easier.
It is, we might say, just a question of deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of unspeakability. Heroically contorted periodic sentences (round parentheses contain square parentheses [furthering diversions from the main statement] which are then brought back in line [with the help of performative, often unnecessary repetitions of the subject, drawing attention to said diversions, the performative repetitions draw attention to them that is, while reasserting the dominance of the subject]) and persistent double possessives (Wallace's apostrophes' regularity creating for this grammatical aberration a kind of coherence and normativity) thrust Wallace's Oedipal relationship with grammar (his mother wrote Practically Painless English, a remedial writing textbook) into plain view. Not to mention the interjections (providing clues about the stories' ostensible conflicts' psychic origins) that occur with insistent regularity.
— Excerpt from Siskind, J. M., 2004. An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent.
Now, read Lautreamont in French, that may be a better test of brains. Me, I stick to online Le Figaro. When I'm feeling ambitious.
"Pulverizingly attractive" is not .... well, conventionally apt, is it? Unless there is a certain overwhelming quality (size, perhaps) to the lady in question.
I think I get it, but I prefer writing that would convey the same observation by creating synesthetic imagery such that you can actually watch the situation unfold. This is more like reading a cold, factual legal brief and I get no idea what the scene looked like, smelled like, or sounded like. Dry as a chip. Joyce it is not. Frontal lobe only workout.
Our tastes in literature are as idiosyncratic as the whorls in our fingerprints. There's apparently a market for lush, dense prose. I prefer declarative sentences, but I pass no moral judgment on those whose troubled childhoods and, perhaps, unorthodox libidinal urges have led them to cloak their meaning in subordinate clauses.
Anything n.n. writes is better exercise for the mind.
I think the better exercise is trying to unpack that sentence and be as true as possible to the original passage.
Atwater, however, was all but celibate since the end of a serious involvement some years prior, and tended to be extremely keyed up and ambivalent in any type of sexually charged situation. Unless he was off base, this increasingly explained in part why -- in the stormy enclosure of the rental car with the pulverizingly attractive Amber Moltke -- he had committed one of the fundamental errors in soft news journalism: asking a centrally important question before he was certain just what answer would advance the interests of the piece.
Dan Brown level. Convoluted, not complex. Maybe there is an advantage to being a pathetically slow reader... One, you have time to process the meaning and Two, you only have so much time, so you avoid shyte and drivel
That sentence is entertaining. It's entertaining for a couple of reasons, one of which is that the form of the sentence is intended to mirror the condition that is being described to us in that sentence. The sentence is kind of messed up and choppy but nevertheless is a coherent whole once you thread all of it into your brain, and the person being described -- that is what it is feeling like to be him at this moment.
There's this fun but conflicted sexually charged situation happening, and as readers, we can all relate to that...we are saying in our heads, "Oh right, I get that. Yup. This sentence is about that".
But then the sentence whacks us by detouring (at first it seems like a detour) into what the sentence is really about. And what is the sentence really about? A cold, cold clinical observation from a writer/reporter about his reportorial exigencies, which are what really matter to him.
Internal Revenue Code Section 341(e)(1), dealing with so-called “collapsible corporations,” now repealed (2003 was its year of death), was the longest sentence ever to appear in the IRC. I never had to apply it; I only knew of it.
I guess my eyeballs went over the words, and I probably pronounced each of the words - likely using a moving finger techniques along with pronouncing aloud as if I were back in Capen Elementary School - so I guess I can claim I read that Code section. Understand it? Not a chance.
The sentence contained 342 words, 25 parentheticals, 17 commas, two dashes — and one period. Just to put Code Section 341(e)(1) into context, this single sentence is longer by word count than the entire Gettysburg Address.
What EDH wrote. This kind of material is what I, as a copyeditor, read all day. I don't need any further mental exercise.
For one, two, or three or more minute workouts, its hard to beat Faulkner's sentences. There is one in "The Bear" that runs for about 1600 words. Here is a complex Faulknerian sentence from "The Bear" that should temporarily challenge us.
Enjoy.
It ran in his knowledge before he ever saw it. It looked and towered in his dreams before he even saw the unaxed woods where it left its crooked print, shaggy, huge, red-eyed, not malevolent but just big—too big for the dogs which tried to bay it, for the horses which tried to ride it down, for the men and the bullets they fired into it, too big for the very country which was its constricting scope. He seemed to see it entire with a child’s complete divination before he ever laid eyes on either—the doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with axes and plows who feared it because it was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name, through which ran not even a mortal animal but an anachronism, indomitable and invincible, out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life at which the puny humans swarmed and hacked in a fury of abhorrence and fear, like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant: the old bear solitary, indomitable and alone, widowered, childless, and absolved of mortality—old Priam reft of his old wife and having outlived all his sons.
My paternal grandparents had autodidact tendencies and always had a few books from library in their apartment and this kind of purple prose use to make them both furious. If author had something important or interesting to say than they would make effort to write clear, short sentences so everyone would understand. Muddled writing means muddled thinking and they were not interested in reading author who was not confident in their message.
If I had the job of copy editor and came across this sort of writing I would demand that the writer give me a diagram of the sentence.
I never found diagramming sentences especially helpful; I would just make the request to irritate the author (so-called).
21 seconds. I don't see the difficulty. Amusing, but amusing in the same way that extremely dysfunctional people can entertain. One wants a limited exposure.
As a former journalist, I was more bothered by his conclusion: "asking a centrally important question before he was certain just what answer would advance the interests of the piece."
That's nonsense. On live TV, yes, but a writer has all kinds of tools at hand to massage the facts to get the outcome you want. You see that every day in reporting out of Washington.
I did enjoy reading the other examples of convoluted sentences. The Bernhard piece about art critics was actually fun to read, like Gertrude Stein.
also all but celibate...
So we're not getting all the factors involved in his reaction. The sentence obviously isn't long enough then.
stormy enclosure
of his own mind, not the rental car, which couldn't be stormy if it tried.
How often are men ambivalent when it comes to sexiness?
Got lost after subject and compound verb "Atwater was all and tended."
Scores high on needless stringing of phrases.
On the good side:
..not even one apostrophe, no contractions;
..no ambiguity of pronoun and antecedent
..no homophone errors
..stringing of phrases mostly avoids the ordinary "and," "while," "before," "even as" connectors.
..no more than the ordinary deadwood: "however," "all but," "tended to be," "any type of," "increasingly," "partly,'....
Apart from readability issues, "asking a centrally important question" and seeking a particular answer to "advance the interests of the piece" is fake news journalism, not soft news. Smacks of the Democrats "We are going to keep recounting votes until we win."
Thanks for the exercise, Prof.
Can one be all but celibate?
I thought there's no use getting into heavy petting.
It only leads to trouble
Edward Bo: "...how the mind has to place down markers for unresolved phrases..."
Well put.
“Pulverizingly attractive” is a vile phrase - Polonius
It’s complexity is entertaining to some and vexing to others. I enjoyed about 40 pages of Infinite Jest and am saving the rest for some time when I have too much time on my hands. Perhaps a lengthy convalescence or incarceration.
Hammond, it would have a very different meaning if he'd written "interest" instead of "interests."
Typo?
Got it first try, maybe fifteen seconds. Of course reading very slowly and with concentration, trying to construct the context. For something really difficult, try some of John Donne's sonnets.
Atwater was one of those who did not do that thing that one does with women. He was one of the brave ones, in the stormy air of the car that was a rental. Once when he was young, before he got older, he would not have asked Amber the question that would not do that thing with his story. It is a good thing for a man to suffer.
Wow, that’s bad writing. Ignore its Bulwer-Lytton characteristics, the real failure is that as written I can’t imagine many readers actually caring what happens next.
A useful method for revising cumbersome, goobledygook style prose is Richard Lanham's paramedic method of revision. It provdes a useful way to think about decluttering prose, and it identifies some of the things that help produce concise, graceful writing.
Lanham develops it in several books. You can find a long discussion of its viablility in his "Revising Prose."
The Paramedic Method
Circle the prepositions (of, in, about, for, onto, into)
Draw a box around the "is" verb forms
Ask, "Where's the action?"
Change the "action" into a simple verb
Move the doer into the subject (Who's kicking whom)
Eliminate any unnecessary slow wind-ups
Eliminate any redundancies.
john,
Pick up anything Chesterton wrote.
As a major Chesterton fan, I cry foul. His sentences aren't especially long or turgid. Where there is a problem, I think, is not in his sentences but in his paragraphs -- or lack thereof. I can open a volume of Chesterton and not find a graf break on two facing pages, which is damned peculiar. Part of it, I imagine, is that he's writing in real time, stream-of-consciousness style, and each idea flows into the next. (There is an awful lot of GKC.) Therefore, there's no reason to put a paragraph break in one spot rather than another. If he could just have slowed down a bit, the constant torrent of words might have been made less intimidating.
I remember reading Friedrich Nietzche as a teenager. I didn't know who he was. This wasn't for some school assignment. It was just a book I'd picked at random in a library and started reading. I had no trouble reading it. I emphasize that because I tried reading some text of Nietzche the other day and I couldn't make any sense of it. It looks like at this point in my life it would be a great deal of work for me to read Nietzche.
But I can remember a time when it wasn't hard, and I read it back then like I read many books back then, both what I thought the surface meaning was, and what I imagined of the author's interior state as he wrote the words. I say imagined because it would be difficult for me to point to what clues gave me the interior state, but regardless there it would be before me.
I remember getting mad at Nietzche. He was so full of himself. There he was the embryonic God surrounded by idiots. Or so I imagined his viewpoint.
I didn't spend a lot of time on Nietzche. I dropped the text pretty quickly. But he stayed in my mind as an example of what I did not want to be.
I loved William Faulkner. I discovered him in a library. I didn't know he was famous. I thought he was so good that I wanted to tell other people about him. And that wasn't usually something I thought to do.
I liked his books so much that I wanted to stretch them out. One book, I'm trying to remember the name, I think it was Absalom, Absalom!, I made last a month by only allowing myself to read it for 15 minutes a day.
.-- .... .- - / - .... . / ..-. ..- -.-. -.- / --- ...- . .-.
http://morse-code.eu/m/eJxjZBARYQj3cAxRCPFwVXALdfZW8A9zDQIAMU4FBA==
Just because i dont care doesnt mean im not paying attention @nuk3dawg
My own opinion of DFW:
He had nothing of interest to say, but said it stylishly.
"Can one be all but celibate?"
It's how you get a little bit pregnant, I think.
25 seconds.
Would have been 24, but I paused a full second at the word "pulverizingly"
I kind of want to know what happens next.
I enjoy the names Atwater & Moltke being in the same story together.
Rereading it, the passage "unless he was off base this increasingly was" catches my interest. It sounds like gobbledygook read quickly, but actually makes perfect sense. More importantly it introduces a brief flash of interior monologue. That's interesting.
“Absalom,Abssalom! supposedly contains the longest grammatical sentence in American literature. The thing about Faulkner’ meandering sentences, whether cumulative, or periodic or both, is that they are grammatical. Quite a few long, complex,literary sentences are
technically ungrammatical. I remember discovering “Soldiers’ Pay” in high school on my own and being quite excited about it.
My favorite Faulkner book is stiil “Go Down Moses,” which contains “The Bear.”
Atwater, however, was, since the end of a serious involvement some years prior, also all but celibate; and tended to be extremely keyed up and ambivalent in any type of sexually charged situation (which unless he was off base this increasingly was). In retrospect, this was partly why, in the stormy enclosure of the rental car with the pulverizingly attractive Amber Moltke, he had committed one of the fundamental errors in soft news journalism: Asking a centrally-important question before he was certain just what answer would advance the interests of the piece.
There, I fixed it.
Sometimes being clever as fuck gets in the way of good communication.
The problem with applying the parenthetical is that the flash of interior monologue is more important that than the words leading up to it.
I liked all of Faulkner's books (that I've read). But of course some more than others. I've probably read The Sound and the Fury five times or so. That's probably the conventional choice, but I when I first read it, I didn't know that this was a widely read book. And therefore I can authentically know that this was my favorite, although there are others not that far behind.
There, I fixed it.
One thing they teach you in writing class is to show rather than tell. What you did was take an entertaining passage that showed the reader his state of mind, and converted it to a kind of narrative summary version of telling the reader about something. DFW is conveying something about his character by almost directly relaying his disordered and complex thoughts. It’s almost like the omniscient narrator is mind melding with Atwater and the point of view is moving almost to first person since the narrator identifies so closely with the character. But he keeps all of the advantages of an omniscient narrator.
But sure, those well muscled people in Cirque de Soleil should be using those arms to drive railroad spikes or chop wood. What is the use of one of their shows. anyway? They seem pointless to me!
Looks like a run-on sentence. I'm seeing 8 commas, an em-dash, and a colon. If you are using that much punctuation within a sentence, you better have a damn good reason. This ain't the eighteenth century.
There is a storm inside a rental car?
Soft journalism has centrally important questions?
And why is the narrator so tense about tense?
45 seconds. It seemed more convoluted than it had to be. I timed myself, but took my time to make sure I could follow it.
Just don’t ban his books, guys. I like them.
Mandrewa, if you haven't, try some short stories, some arranged in books like "Knight's Gambit." I can't remember all the titles I liked. The Sartoris stories "The Unvanquished" "The Tall Men" "Two Soldiers" and its sequel. "Grandma Something and the Battle of Hurricane Creek" is funny. You do have to get geared up for Faulkner.
Michelle, can you recommend some (short) Chesterton? I enjoyed all of Father Brown (at least twice) but haven't tried anything else.
"Napoleon of Notting Hill"
and
"The Man who was Thursday"
Two novels to try.
I think "Napoleon..." is more interesting.
Chesterton published a lot of stuff, he was a "wonder of nature" that way.
when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:
“Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”
Now unfashionable Edwardian opulence
Not everyone's taste, but it's Saki to me.
Well. I recommend "Mongol-un nigucha tobchiyan" in the original Khalka, alternately titled "Yuáncháo Mìshǐ" in pinyin Chinese. Preferably the version transcribed by Baavuday Tsend Gun because its truer to the Khalka poetic metre.
Just sayin'.
But in the spirit of this thread, here's a challenging text:
The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science of Morals" belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered: -- an interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, "Science of Morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste, -- which is always a foretaste of more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT is still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish -- and perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of these living crystallizations -- as preparation for a THEORY OF TYPES of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science: they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality -- and every philosopher hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has been regarded as something "given." How far from their awkward pride was the seemingly insignificant problem -- left in dust and decay -- of a description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to moral philosopher's knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement -- perhaps as the morality of their environment, their positions, their church, their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone -- it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of morals -- problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals" hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there!...
You know I chose that arrogantly and at random, typing it in before even reading it, confident that I would have an example of something hard to understand, and my reward is I think I understand what he's saying although there are definitely parts that confuse me. The quote is from the beginning of the fifth chapter of "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche, published in 1886.
For short essays by Chesterton, try his _Utopia of the Usurers_ (1917). It's available at Gutenberg. Cheserton's embrace of the label "socialist" might surprise some of his modern readers, as well his open anti-Semitism. But my God, the man can write an essay. International communism was, to Chesterton, the Tower of Bebel rebuilt (and soon to be toppled). WWI was a bitter pill for Chesterton to swallow, as workers demonstrated that their fealty to nation and volk was stronger than their fealty to social class or religion.
Mandrewa -- seems like Nietzsche's gone the long way 'round in saying that power makes morality.
Ambivalently he seized her, despite her ridiculous name, for she pulverized all including realizing his impotence.
Sort of a male bodice-ripper sentence (which I think was intended) or a take off on John Updike.
Much better to LISTEN to Faulkner on CD.
Its so much easier.
GO read Heidegger or Kant if you want a mental workout.
I still don't know what those dudes were selling.
Lewis, I don't think he's saying that. Or maybe it's in one of those parts I don't understand.
Well, here's what I think it's about. He's outlining the first steps of what you would need to do if you actually wanted to have a Science of Morals. And his main point is that there are actually a lot of different moralities out there. That is in actual practice, for what people have believed, there has been a lot of variety. Funny thing is, I've thought about this myself. Hah, surprise! Now I'm getting curious, because I haven't read Beyond Good and Evil.
But you get at this by reading about history. And here's the thing about historians. Ninety percent of them at least, are not writing about the past. They think they are, but they are actually writing about the present. Their real motivation is they have some ideology of the present that they are trying to justify. And every thing they write is in terms of our present day ways of thinking, and if just possibly, people in the past were not thinking in the way we think today, they are going to misunderstand, or perhaps not even acknowledging anything that doesn't go with the present day narrative.
Now there are the rare historians that somehow manage to get out of the present, even if only imperfectly, and convey something of how people actually thought in a different place and time. And to me it's astonishing how different it can be. Now anyone that is as old as I am should be able to suspect that, because look how much things have changed even within our lifetime. But still a lot of people don't get it and the young probably don't even suspect it.
Nietzsche is also making the point that most people, or more specifically people that write about this, begin with the assumption that their morality is the universal morality.
24 seconds reading carefully.
Addendum: And 5 minutes later it's gone forever...
That's not a workout. It's just flabby writing. Hit the gym and tighten those sentences!
There are two kinds of obscurationism: that done on purpose and that done accidently because of lack of skill and talent.
The question is: can you tell which is which without the benefit of the doubt?
A brilliant mind may not be a brilliant (or even effective) writer.
There is this 'fashion' in Academia which rejoices as 'mature' the most obtuse and obscure style of writing. That reading and understanding bad prose is a sign of 'intelligence'.
Perhaps.
I am, however, reminded of that one gentleman back in the 90's who wrote a Postmodernist paper which was lauded by the Academy...only to find that the man who wrote it admitted he deliberately said absolutely NOTHING in the paper, but did it in the 'high style' of Academia.
Yet the Academy, with their 'higher understanding' could not discern the very point that there WAS no point. Hmm!
Or to put it in three words: Effort =/= work.
This is the first Faulkner I have read. I am unimpressed.
I got it, I hate it.
That's not a workout. It's just flabby writing. Hit the gym and tighten those sentences!
To paraphrase Larry Niven: If you have something important to say, say it as clearly and plainly as you can so any fault in misunderstanding the writer lies with the reader.
If you have NOTHING to say, say it any way you want."
Hmm. Not Faulkner? Then there are two authors with essentially nothing to say.
We are finite seeking to comprehend infinite. The four horsemen of advent are infinities.Each a TRUE infinity never to be comprehended, rather understood less, the harder you seek to find. Not paradoxes, but similar, in that the more you understand, the more you understand you do not understand.
True great writing is poetic, but not poetry that seeks to obscure, but to reveal more than what can be written. When you encounter God, the great I AM, the only honest answer is: "You want me to do What?"
Simple words, Love, Joy, Peace, Hope. Each an eternal infinite journey. How can mere limited words express infinity.
"How can mere limited words express infinity."
Infinity is found nowhere in nature, so words surpass nature, at least.
By the way, I hear the copy of Jonathon Livingston Seagull is back at the library, so head on down there before somebody else takes it again!
You guys make me think of the emperor in the movie Amadeus criticizing Mozart. “Too many notes!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_UsmvtyxEI
Infinite monkeys!
Judging by the various Wallace excerpts which have been posted here, his writing is appropriate for his ideas, which lie somewhere along the trivial/false axis.
This thread has been one long game of "King of the Mountain. "
He sort of predicts the Russian trolls in Infinite Jest, except they are Quebecois separatist crypto-fascist who can debate the meaning of freedom with an infuriating, but relentless logic that can only be rebutted with a declaration of faith. The provide what is now called a viral meme that uses a kind of Judo to use Americans freedom against us.
"To paraphrase Larry Niven: If you have something important to say, say it as clearly and plainly as you can so any fault in misunderstanding the writer lies with the reader.
"If you have NOTHING to say, say it any way you want."
Well, that's fine for Larry Niven. That's his way and preference. (The one Niven novel I read, for a class in college, was RINGWORLD. It wasn't awful, but it certainly did not tempt me to read any other Niven books.) Writers have different purposes. "Saying something" is not just about moving characters from point to point in a plot schema, but can also be expressed in the way the story is told. The way something is told can often be more important than what is being told.
Some painters use bright, bold colors, while others use muted colors. A writer's writing--independently of whether it is competent--reflects the writer's personality, thought processes, his nervous system.
I studied advertising in college--switched over after two semesters of journalism, which I learned was a job for someone more extroverted than I--so I learned how to write compressed prose, to pack as much information as possible into a terse 30-second commercial, or to fit the word count to the limited space available in a print ad. (I had started learning out to say the most with the least in my prior two semesters of journalism.)
However, by nature, I tend to write long sentences with many clauses. Others, by nature, write more tersely. I can revise for concision when necessary, but I tend to exemplify the example of Blaise Pascal, who began one letter to a friend with this apology, "I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short."
That sentence is showing off how mixed up the writer is. Why torture the readers mind with recursions and temporizing? Why spin in circles. The only answer is the writer's insistence on showing his irritating skill at throwing in clauses. He can do it all day long. He can alienate the reader all day long.
Don't buy his books then.
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