In Praise of the Long Sentence

Tue Apr 19 00:58:16 CDT 2016

The alligator, a ten-foot female weighing about five hundred pounds, opened
her eyes and, after several minutes, moved her head from side to side,
drowsy, disoriented, not knowing where she was, not catching the scent of
anything familiar other than grass and dry soil. No water close by. She
raised her head and hissed in the night, in the sound of insects. The wind
rose and with it came a scent she recognized as something she liked that
she had smelled before sometime in her life and had eaten. After several
more minutes she began to move in a sluggish sort of way as though half
asleep, not entirely upright on her legs, brushing the grass with her tail.
The scent she liked became stronger as she moved and kept moving until her
snout touched something she had never smelled before. She sniffed and air
came through it into her nostrils, bringing a strong scent of the thing she
liked. Now she pushed and whatever it was in front of her bent against her
weight until it gave way and the alligator walked through it and felt the
ground cold now, smooth and hard. The scent she liked was here, though not
enough in one place that it would become the thing itself she could fasten
her jaws on and tear or take into her mouth whole. She settled on the cool
ground, feeling it become warm beneath her as she went to sleep.

(The 1st paragraph of ch. 7 from Leonard's Maximum Bob)

2016-04-19 4:52 GMT+02:00 Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>:

>  I loaned out my copy 2 years ago and it never came back. So I can’t  give
> an example right now. I was pretty careful at the time I noticed these
> sentences to see if they were just odd constructions. But they are not a
> constant occurrance through the book. I will see if I can get a library
> copy and find what I am talking about. Elmore Leonard is a damn good writer
> and one of the best at inventing credible language for his characters, and
> I thing alligators would fit his style,  but I really like this book.
> > On Apr 18, 2016, at 2:20 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I hate to contradict you Joseph but I just had a look at the first three
> paragraphs (Look inside!) of Timothy and even though the sentences are
> short they are quite conventional. From the first six sentences (1st
> paragraph) four are very normal subject-verb-sentences. The 2nd paragraph
> begins: "Ground breaks away. May wind shivers in my ears. My legs churn
> (...). I look down on bean tops."
> >
> > In Elmore Leonard's Maximum Bob there's the beginning of one chapter (7)
> told from the pov of an alligator that's better written in my eyes,
> regarding the limitations of the animal in question.
> >
> > 2016-04-18 16:31 GMT+02:00 Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>:
> >  A couple yars ago I got a book, a deeply delightful meditation on the
> natural world as it might be experiencd by another non- human being.
> > Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg.
> >
> > Timothy turns out to be a female tortoise and was a real “pet” for a
> clergyman/amateur naturalist .
> > The unique thing about the writing is the dipensing with the need for
> subject verb ( optional object)  sentence structures. There are many
> sentences in Timothy  that are simply filling in details about the topic,
> place or time being observed. Sentences without a subject , or without a
> verb. Sentences with lists of gerunds or sentences with lists of nouns and
> adverb phrases. This had to be allowed because the whole thing is told from
> the tortoise's point of view and nobody knows what kind of grammatic rules
> apply in the reptilian mind. The reading flows beautifully and lucidly
> without these rules. As a matter of fact, after the first chapter I thought
> it would make a good read aloud, so Priscilla and I took turns reading it
> in the evenings or when we had a snack or went for coffee. The meaning
> flowed elegantly and without strain. For me the beauty of this book
> suggests that our adherence to the sentence can be inhibiting and is
> clearly not indispensable.
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Apr 18, 2016, at 6:52 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > "I assert that any sort of sound sentence is superior to any
> non-sentence because a sentence contains more meaning than a non-sentence."
> > >
> > > It's like a postgraduate seminar in circular reasoning, confusion, and
> self-satisfaction just to watch Murnane fail to support that assertion. A
> thousand words later, it's actually *less* clear what it might mean.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 10:37 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > An infuriating essay I mentioned here a little while ago has had its
> > > paywall removed.
> > >
> > > The (hugely respected) author spends the first few paragraphs arguing
> > > that Pynchon and Frank Kermode wouldn't recognise a grammatically
> > > correct sentence if they stumbled over it.
> > >
> > > https://meanjin.com.au/essays/in-praise-of-the-long-sentence/
> > > -
> > > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> > >
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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