Post assignments 10/5-10/7

Your posts should relate to the distributed texts for Presentations 1 & 2. Engage in close analysis, using whatever tools seem to be appropriate, and following the presenters' in-class comments.

Lanham, chapters 6 & 7 are also assigned for this week. Along with chapter 5, these chapters will be important sources of close reading ideas for your midterm and final projects. Therefore, you should be sure you understand them and use your post to ask any questions about voice (chapter 5), repeating patterns intended to persuade (chapter 6), and a sentence-by-sentence analysis of two texts (chapter 7). We've touched on all these topics, but these Lanham chapters will give you a more methodical way of approaching them. I will answer any questions when I comment on your blogs.

Assignments for Tuesday 9/29 & 9/30

for 9/29: Continuing to page through The Art of Styling Sentences and paying some attention to the sections in the back about putting sentences together, examine Orwell's famous "Politics and the English Language." However, people feel about Orwell, he is persuasive. In fact, if there's one common insult that's thrown at political talk it's that it's "Orwellian." How does he persuade and does he avoid the kind of language he criticizes? I don't think you need many guidelines to analyze this text: go for it. for 9/30. Back to fiction: one of the most admired British writers of the 20th Century was D.H. Lawrence, and this is one of his most admired stories. Analyze: storytelling style, diction, overall thematic effect, irony?, sentence types, imagery...

O, that Joycean Rag!

Joyce is a fictional realist. This is a funny and complicated term in literary studies, applied to figures as diverse as Emile Zola, Balzac, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and John Updike. In Joyce's case it means that, especially in Ulysses, he goes to extremes to expose the physical and psychological realities of life.

The author is not an explicit presence in Joyce. He creates doubles of himself and puts them in the story, but we rarely feel the presence of "James Joyce."

Joyce uses a passive style - objects doing things - to emphasize physical realities. This applies to thoughts too: he flatly states what a character may think. His descriptions are often dispassionate and clinical. He hated sentimentality - makes fun of sentimental prose a lot in Ulysses.

In a way he is an anti-rhetorician. In Ulysses he spends an extravagant amount of time making fun of high-flown rhetoric. He seemed to feel, like Shakespeare, that persuasive speakers are an evil influence. Therefore, his writing is free of the emotive words and rhythms fiction writers use to make us feel things.

A rare exception is from the first pages of Ulysses, when Buck Mulligan tells Stephen Daedalus that death does not matter and people are essentially like cattle that go to the butcher shop upon death. Joyce refers to the "gaping wound that the words had left in [Stephen's] heart." But Joyce seldom does this.

Joyce has a subtle awareness of sound and rhythm and uses it to evoke what he is describing. Here's an example, again from Ulysses.

Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and
sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside
him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set
them down heavily and sighed with relief.

Notice the long vowel sounds that accentuate Stephen's action; the quick rhythm of Buck Mulligan tossing the fry onto the dish; and the extended rhythm of carrying the meal to the table, ending with an almost-audible sigh.

Like Nabokov's sentences, Joyce's often piles independent clauses together paratactically. However, as Anthony pointed out, there is a suspensive quality to many passages as well. As a storyteller, Joyce uses a kind of metonymy a lot. He gives us details that imply a lot of things about the character.

What I learned from our discussion of VN

VN's "ironic style" offers maximum flexibility. Most non-ironic writers would try to be more consistent. 1. VN's style is paratactic: he varies long sentences with short sentences, or course, but altogether they are usually arranged paractically. This emphasizes his detachment. He never or almost never uses cumulative writing, because this would carry on too long to allow the narrator to make his presence known. 2. VN uses a crazy salad of words from different vocabularies: you could say he uses words from the following vocabulary sets: colloquial, sentimental, intellectual, clinical, slang, archaic, quoted and allusive material (there's a lot), French. 3. VN moves from intensity to detachment. The intensity is not in cumulative or running style; his style always feels controlled, not spontaneous like running style. It is from hyperbole, the unrestrained use of strings of adjectives or verbs. 4. VN often uses a staccato rhythm. "Lo. Lee. Ta." This could be described as a paratactic rhythm, because it places words next to each other the way parataxis places sentences alongside each other. 5. VN shifts modes of address: I mean, sometimes he's speaking to an imaginary jury, sometimes directly to the reader, sometimes to a general audience, sometimes just composing on the page. 6. VN uses unusual subject-verb choice to create metaphorical effects: everyone does this: "I could eat him up with a spoon"; "she floated towards me"; "the class was a yawn" - these are all metaphors. But VN's are more pointed and unusual. When Humbert is trying to remember the name of the taxi driver who stole his first wife, he initially refers to him, an East European, as Taxovich. Then he remembers his name: "Maximovich! His name taxied to me!" 7. VN constantly displays an awareness of the sound of words: like Joyce, he loved puns and his constant wordplay adds to the general sense of playfulness and detachment. I guess this subject is worthy of a book, so that's enough for now.

for 9/23

Read Lanham's chapter 5 and make some brief notes, summarizing the basic concepts from the book thus far. While this is fairly dull, it will help you to remember the ideas. It will also give me a chance to see if you're finding some points confusing. Some ideas overlap a bit, in case you haven't noticed.

Also: write a short-short story in either the ironic form of Nabokov or the modernist-realist mode of James Joyce. This doesn't mean an imitation. It means trying to use the same tools these authors used. These tools were summarized in class, and in other posts. It's practice, really, being aware of issues like word choice, cultivating an ironic voice, varying your mode of address (to whom do you seem to be speaking?) etc. See what you can do with these elements of prose. Because it's an exercise or experiment, I wouldn't expect it to be polished or necessarily successful as fiction. It's practice. This should be typed, on paper (not your blog), and please bring four copies to share in groups.

for 9/21

due 10 p.m. 9/20
Continue reviewing sentence types and find some examples in James Joyce's "Grace," in the packet. Find examples of four distinct types - i.e., not variations on the same setence structure. If you can't find them in Joyce, look back at other readings, or - indeed - anywhere. It's just practice thinking in terms of sentence structure. Please read "Grace." Begin with "far reading": that is, general and brief remarks on the impression, thematic concern, and style of the story. Then zero in on a passage, reading it using various tools: grammar, voice, tone, lexicon (diction), styles of cohesion (repetition), sonic effects (alliteration and assonance)... The passage need not be long - paragraph length. Be ready to talk about your blog post in class.

44 ways of looking at an inauguration speech

Here are all or most of them.

Some highlights, or bloopers:

Obama: note how much more action-oriented his sentences are. Here is a great cumulative sentence: The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. It has two levels, since the clauses modify "time" and then "gift."

Clauses, by the way, after the independent clause, usually begin with a present or past participal ("passed" in the above quote) or a noun phrase (or appositive - "that noble idea," "the God-given promise") or an infinitive (beginning with "to" - "to carry forward"). Obama's directness communicates honesty and reliability, two traits for which he is most praised. By contrast, Clinton's speech, with its constant use of antithesis and protasis / apodosis, chiasmus, and anaphora, seems rather sneaky.

Here's a good glossary of rhetorical terms.

Let's look at George Washington, Clinton's apparent alter-ego. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years--a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. Both sentences are remarkable, multi-level, cumulative masterpieces. Today's audiences might find them difficult to follow. Today's presidents never would have said the thing about ill health and being overwhelmed with despondence. He would have been put on medication immediately. The second sentence is suspensive to the max, because it interrupts the subject "the magnitude and difficulty" and the verb "could not but overwhelm" with a lengthy participial phrase. But Washington is pretty much saying the same thing as Obama's beginning: I am humbled, overwhelmed etc. He shows more ceremonial modesty than today's pols would probably reveal.

One more: the second George Bush. He begins by saying he is humbled. Then: We have a place, all of us, in a long story. A story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the American story. This has some of the metaphysical components: "a place in all of us." Then a cumulative sentence using plenty of anaphorae and oppositions (or antitheses). He frames the long sentence with a very simple one, a single independent clause.

Politicians, broadly speaking, use the periodic style, not the running style. Why? Because the running style gives the impression of spontaneity, making-it-up-as-you-go-along. It is charming and engaging, but would not inspire trust. The periodic sentence shows a disciplined mind.

Assignment for 9/16

The Art of Styling Sentences is a grammar book giving the basic designs of 20 sentences. I don't suggest you read it from beginning to end, but rather use it as a reference to identify sentence types. There is some overlap between this book and Lanham's Analyzing Prose, but Lanham identifies various styles (e.g. running and periodic; hypotactic and paratactic) while this book describes the grammatical structure of particular sentences. To start, leaf through the book and review the 20 sentence types, in boxes on the right hand pages. Pick a passage from the first pages of Lolita and do a close reading using sentence types and stylistic distinctions. How does Nabokov use style and sentence craft to create a certain effect, emphasize certain information, create a mood, maintain a voice? Feel free, in your close reading, to comment on diction, juxtaposition of words, repetition of sounds. Alternate assignment: rewrite the passage you've picked as a single, cumulative sentence with more than two levels. That is, translate Nabokov into Faulkner.

How to Analyze Bellow / How Writers Can Learn from Bellow

Alana writes that Bellow "writes about Bellow as if he knows him personally"; check out her remarks here. Bellow's confidential, intimate tone makes his fiction compelling and vivid in spite of his intellectual leanings. He strikes a perfect balance between the tough Chicago street kid and the University of Chicago professor he eventually became. How does he pull off this miracle, since most people who are wise about writing will tell you to pick a tone and stick with it. Alisha notes that Bellow uses the concise parataxis and asyndeton to reinforce Woody's simple, strong, straightforward, and laconic demeanor. That's interesting, because it shows that Bellow uses less formal and more conversational rhetorical techniques - such as asyndeton - to communicate Woody's personality, while the language often reflects Bellow's presence. The two are so seamlessly connected that we don't notice much distinction between the narrator and character. This flexibility gives Bellow his rich and convincing narrative voice.

If it were Morris telling his own story, Asha notes, we might resist him as a character more fully. After all, he's a bit of a scoundrel. But Bellow tells Morris's story through Woody - and through the narrator's unmistakable voice who mocks the mother as "the Empress of India." This leads us to have more sympathy for an unlikable character; in fact, this sympathy for the colorful rogue drives the story.

You might say everything in the story is symbolic, not just the obvious and unapologetic symbol of the silver dish. For Sara G. the story "explores a sense conflict thematically and stylistically. As the protagonist, Woody, struggles psychologically and as a member of society, the structure of the text demonstrates similar patterns." It is not just that the story tells a personal tale that enacts social conflicts (poor vs. rich; respectability vs. libertinism; Christian doctrine vs. Jewish ritual). The different voice in the story itself are the voices of different parts of society: the intellectual, the neighborhood people. And the structure moves from the universal (death) to the personal (mourning). As Lindsey notes, the opening passage directly addresses the contemporary reader as "you," using a paratactic rant to evoke the chaos of the age in which this New Yorker reader is living (late 1970s). Throughout, and throughout his writing, Bellow uses asyndetic parataxis to build intensity and to evoke the Yiddish-derived rhythms of impassioned speech. Authors like Philip Roth have followed in his footsteps, but it takes some literary chops to pull it off.

So, what can we learn from Bellow? See Knox's post for an analysis of the story structure and Bellow's way of making a particular character universal. Berlice admires Bellow's poetic use of alliteration. Erin gives us a very useful analysis of Bellow's paragraph design and diction - check it out. Ben cannily notes Bellow's evocative use of repetition and cyclical design of sentences.

In short, Bellow is not afraid to exploit all the resources of sentence types, voice, point of view, and sonic techniques. I recommend the novels Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, or Mr. Sammler's Planet. Bellow undoes all the stereotypes about American writers as merely "spontaneous."

Elements of Reading Prose

As we make sense of the grammatical method with Lanham, that'll be our focus. But close reading prose goes beyond grammar, and eventually we'll cover all its aspects. Analysis is not simply a descriptive endeavor; rather, it's a way of explaining how a text creates meaning and how it creates an emotional effect. These are the elements:

• the "music" or rhythm of prose. The different sentence types Lanham discusses - hypotactic, paratactic, asyndetic, and polysyndetic - all create different rhythms. Parataxis creates an insistent rhythm that builds in intensity. An asyndetic style also heightens the intensity, as does the repetition of words. By contrast, a hypotactic style sounds logical and reasoned, because it follows an important assertion with supporting information.
• the use of vocabulary in prose. Prose writers pick words that come from distinct genres and mix them together, or they stick with a single vocabulary. Words in English may be said to come from vocabulary "sets." For instance, words come from philosophy, from slang or colloquial speech, from pop culture, from technical fields, from "bookish" diction, etc. The way words from different sets are mixed is important to the effect and meaning of prose.
• words that have a special meaning in a particular work. Once the themes and language of a work are established, specific words can take on a particular meaning or connotation in the work. Authors repeat certain words and have certain characteristic words. Words can start to take on a sarcastic or ironic feel. Specific words can be associated with a character. They can evoke thematic concerns established in the text. In short, every great work develops its own language.
• ambiguity. We associate ambiguity mainly with poetry. But great prose writers create sentences that often have an open meaning, or one that can be interpreted in more than one way. The sentence structure often makes the writing a bit ambiguous.
• tone. The grammatical issues we're talking about help to establish a tone. Since there are so many ways to say the same thing, authors establish tone by choosing a complex or simple sentence structure.
  
• metaphor and imagery. Good prose is loaded with similes and metaphorical imagery. These techniques help to describe something in a lively way, but they also suggest a bunch of other things that gives the passage another level of meaning.
  

In Lolita, as Humbert Humbert drives down the road with his young charge in tow, he narrates: "I slowed from a blind 70 to a purblind 50." Close reading? It's "verb style," front loaded with action: "I slowed." The honomym (or (musical) similarity of sound) between blind and purblind shows Humbert's playfulness, establishing a detached and humorous tone. The statement also has a metaphorical effect, because the sudden change of speed shows us Humbert's erratic mood. Many of Nabokov's sentences are elaborate, paratactic affairs, but this one is clipped and wastes no words, evoking the speed at which Humbert slows down. We know that he is holding himself back in some way, resisting his impulses.

Assignment for 9/14

Read Lanham, chapter three. Look back through the past three chapters of Lanham and scour for any questions you may have about his reflections on style. I'm talking about things you really didn't understand. Please begin your post with these questions.

Let's look at some political prose. Let's look at Bill Clinton's inauguration speech. Clinton is renowned as a great orator. How does he use various sentence types? What persuasive techniques does he use? Comment on the effectiveness of his use of repetition. Comment on his vocabulary. Use Lanham as specifically as possible.

Assignment for 9/9

Please note: beginning with this assignment, posts are due at 10 p.m. the night before class. This will give me and your classmates a chance to review them before class.

Read Lanham, chapter two. Also read Saul Bellow's "A Silver Dish." This can be read as a single page and printed out through the links at the top and bottom of the page.

Bellow is a great Jewish American writer, one who recently died. It's hard to think of a writer who is more revered for his "great sentences." Review after review raves about his "breathtaking beautiful sentences." But how many could explain what makes them so good?

This story is one of Bellow's most admired short works. Please read it closely, choose several passages to zero in on, and bring Lanham's ideas - or whatever works - to some close analysis. Again, focus on key paragraphs, not the whole story. No need to stay with grammar and structure. Think of Bellow's diction, way of combining words, way of designing a paragraph.

Sentences and Subtext: Notes

As we saw in class with the New York Times quote, the structure of a sentence can send a different message than the literal meaning.
a. Noun-verb constructions that do not imply an action by a person come across as milder; they soften the message or implication of a sentence.
b. The "noun style" usually uses a weak verb (like "is") - meaning, a verb that doesn't imply an action. It is followed, as Lanham says, by preposition phrases and adverbial phrases that place a lot of specific things - nouns - in the sentence. This gives the sentence an objective feel, a detached and factual and thoughtful feel.
c. Information put in an appositive before the verb can be used as a persuasive tool. It manages to convince the reader of something without making a direct statement. Example: "Jonah Goldberg, a journalist and not a trained historian, regards Woodrow Wilson as a semi-totalitarian figure." Without direct statement, the sentence implies that Jonah Goldberg's views are untrustworthy.

Contexts of Prose

1. Close reading of prose is useful only as an explication of how the language works in its context.
2. We tend to view poetry as free of context and prose as dependent on context. However, there are limits to this. The context of poetry is typically seen as the history of poetry. The context of prose is dependent on the work's presumed purpose with its cultural genre.
3. Of course, no work of prose has a discreet purpose, unless it is propaganda. And we tend to be suspicious of excessively agenda-driven writing. However, prose works do have a general purpose - e.g. to entertain, to inform, to enlighten, to convince.
4. The more context-dependent prose is, the less likely we are to call it art. This goes back to Immanuel Kant's idea of pure art as separate from politics or personal considerations.
5. Roman Jakobson, the Russian linguist, described all texts as communicative acts: a message from an addresser to an addressee. The message was the text itself (the actual words), but the meaning had to do with the addresser, addressee, the context, cultural factors affecting meaning, etc.