Competent Writing Skills (was Re: teacher rants)

[David Casseres]

>At 08:30 PM 7/12/97 -0700, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>The text in question: (non pynchonian)
>>
>> "Summer afternoons when the tar bubbles bloom in the road wild daisies
>> beckon girls to seek petal fortunes and weave chains of fragrant dreams."

>I've still got to disagree with you; it still seems to me like some kind of
>dangling noun phrase or something.
>
>Any of you english/writing teachers want to weigh in on this?

Leave it to a once-upon-a-time editor like me to butt in:  The word "On" 
is elided from the beginning of the sentence, as in the great Walt 
Kelly's sentence "Some days I'm just too lazy to call a spade a spade."  
Leaving something like that to be "understood" is pretty common practice. 
 A comma after "road" would make the sentence easier to read, but a 
writer may well and legitimately choose to leave out such a comma for 
reasons of effect.  In this sentence it gives a certain wantonness, 
appropriate to the topic, and (more important) it strengthens the 
juxtaposition of those tar bubbles blooming against the daises.  I like 
it.

By the way, "good teeth boys" would be clearer if written "good-teeth 
boys," boys with good teeth.  Just a slightly twisted idiom.

Context is all.  I don't know what the rest of the column was like, but 
if I found constructions like those in the work of (dare I say it?) 
Pynchon, I wouldn't blink.  If it was a piece of technical description, 
I'd whip out the blue pencil toot sweet.


Cheers,
David