auntieannie

Skimmed through some, but overall I loved this book. "As I said when we began, sentence craft and sentence appreciation are not trivial pursuits. ... As Gertrude Stein said it best:I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences. . . . I like the everlasting feeling of sentences as they diagram themselves. In that way one is completely possessing something and incidentally one's self. (Lectures in America).""Part of my thesis, as I have already suggested, is that the exercise of analyzing Updike's sentence and then trying to match it will have a payoff when you go back and read it. Understanding how it is that he produced a complex effect will make the effect more available to you as a reader. You might have a sense of how good it is before you take it apart, but taking it apart will give you an enhanced understanding of just what kind of goodness it performs. My wife is a serious painter. When she and I go to a gallery we might both be impressed by the same painting, but she will be able to tell me, in analytical detail, what makes it impressive, how the painter did it. So it is with writing: the practice of analyzing and imitating sentences is also the practice of learning how to read them with an informed appreciation. Here's the formula: Sentence craft equals sentence comprehension equals sentence appreciation." p10-11It's not the thought that counts chapter summary: "This, then, is my theology: You shall tie yourself to forms and the forms shall set you free. I call this the Karate Kid method of learning how to write. In the 1984 cult movie (recently remade), the title figure is being trained to perform in a math, but rather than being instructed in a match's rhythms and demands, he is asked by his teacher to practice polishing cars ("wax on, wax off") and painting fences. Although the kids thinks he isn't learning anything, he is learning everything: he is learning the formal motions that, when actual combat occurs, will come to him naturally. Like the verbal forms that enable thought and meaning, these physical forms enable action in a sequence, even though they are essentially static and abstract. Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what you are writing doesn't make the grade because it has degenerated into a mere pile of discrete items." p.33Chapter 4: What is a good sentence? "In short, pick your effect, figure out what you want to do, and then figure out how to do it." p44First sentences: In the afternoons it was the custom of Miss Jane Marple to unfold her second newspaper. (Agatha Christie, Nemesis, 1971)One day Karen DeCilia put a few observations together and realized her husband Frank was sleeping with a real estate woman in Boca. (Elmore Leonard, Gold Coast, 1980)The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. (Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus, 1959)