WORDS ON THE LINE by Philip Vassallo

Friday, July 26, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 25: John Hersey on the Effects of Nuclear War

Hiroshima, John Hersey's widely read 1946 account of the aftermath of the maiden dropping of an atomic bomb on a human population, begins with this 65-word sentence:

At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.

Hersey instantly humanizes this well-known catastrophic event by bringing into the book not world leaders, military strategists, or herculean warriors but regular people, civilian workers with mouths to feed and errands to run.

In beginning a book with a sentence as long as he does, Hersey runs the risk of putting off his readers. But we are drawn in as soon as we read the infamous date.

By preceding the woman's name with Miss and her coworker as girl, we imagine younger people who have their lives ahead of them.

Hersey's use of commonplace details like clerk, personnel department, sitting down, plant office, and desk adds remarkable tension to the preceding clause when the atomic bomb flashed.

The ordinary motion of turning to a coworker also does not escape the reader, this apparently mundane gesture now etched forever in Ms. Sasaki's mind—and ours.

Another striking image: in her place. Hersey could have dispensed with that prepositional phrase. But Ms. Sasaki was supposed to be in that very spot at the East Asia Tin Works. That was her job. Of all the real estate in the world to be sitting in, her place was where the atomic bomb dropped. This image makes me think of the necessity of people living and working in Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945. No people, no detonating of an atomic bomb. The sentence is full of humanity like few others.

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Friday, July 19, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 24: Samuel P. Huntington on the Greatest Global Threat

Last sentences should be powerful if authors want readers to remember their books. But few capture the imagination as creatively as this final sentence from the 1996 best-selling The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order by Samuel P. Huntington:

In the emerging era, clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war.

Rather than analyze the substance of Huntington's brilliant, prophetic pre-9/11 premise (clashes of civilizations), I simply want to focus on the author's rhetorical approach to this 28-word sentence. Note the parallel treatment of greatest threat to world peace with surest safeguard against world war: a negative with a positive followed by a positive with a negative. Clear contrasting expressions equal easier understanding.

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Friday, July 12, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 23: Robert Hughes on the Politics of Division

Robert Hughes's 1993 political commentary, Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America, includes this sentence:

To divide a polity you must have scapegoats and hate objects—human caricatures that dramatize the difference between Them and Us.

This 21-word sentence presents six noteworthy rhetorical devices:

The choice of polity – Why not government, society, culture, civilization, or civilized people? Perhaps because he wants to send some readers to the dictionary, but the main reason is polity evokes all those alternative words.
The dropping of a comma after polity – Using the introductory comma would slavishly submit to grammatical standards, and Hughes does not want his readers even to slightly pause at that point.
The choice of you – Hughes could have selected the more grammatically appropriate people or we, or the more politically hyperbolic despots or plutocrats. But he is going for plain speak, not melodrama, drawing attention to an idea, not his use of language.
The use of a dash – A comma after objects would work well here, but as Russell Baker once said, we use dashes to shout. And Hughes shouts at just the right words—human caricatures.
The choice of dramatize – A simpler show, a more academic distinguish, a brighter highlight, or a more dramatic convulse could work here. But dramatize complements caricatures because of the similar images both words conjure.
The capitalization of Them and Us – People have used these contrasting words for generations. They are embedded in American culture, observant for the Australian-born Hughes, who arrived in New York at age 32.

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Friday, July 05, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 22: Allan Bloom on Freedom of Mind

In his controversial 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed and Impoverished the Soul of Today's Students, Allan Bloom writes this stunning sentence:

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts.

Consider how much is happening in this 22-word sentence. Bloom sets up three contrasting ideas, each laid out in parallel form and each giving us a long pause for deep thought:

not only, or not even especially – Although I've been reading for years, I came across this phrase for the first time. So I had to take in the meaning of these transitional phrases: the family not only and the unusually juxtaposed not even especially. Setting off the latter phrase in commas demands at least a slight pause, but making a point of it at all causes the reader to stop and think about a stronger alternative to not only.
the absence of ... the presence of – This contrast seems simple enough, but it is not, because what must be absent and what must be present relate to different spheres: legal constraints to law and alternative thoughts to philosophy.
legal constraints .. alternative thoughts – Both of these phrases neatly include a well balanced adjective and noun, so they are grammatically parallel. But not conceptually. Legal constraints exist whether or not we participate, whether or not we protest on the streets, whether or not we crawl under a manhole cover to sink undetected in a sewer; alternative thoughts requires our recognizing their truthful, sometimes burdensome reality, reckoning with their potentially challenging implications, and doing something about them.

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Friday, June 28, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 21: William L. Shirer on Hitler's Final Hours

Toward the end of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer writes that unto death Hitler learned nothing of Nazi failures, as proven in the Fuehrer's two final documents, his last will and his political testament:

Indeed, in the last hours of his life he reverted to the young man he had been in the gutter days in Vienna and in the early rowdy beer hall period in Munich, cursing the Jews for all the ills of the world, spinning his half-baked theories about the universe, and whining that fate once more had cheated Germany of victory and conquest.

At 62 words, that's a lot of sentence. Here Shirer summarizes both his 1,245-page book about Hitler's 12 years in power and the dictator's sociopathic (cursing the Jews), distorted (spinning half-baked theories), paranoid (whining that fate) worldview. Shirer chooses reverted to signal Hitler's failure to evolve as a rational, moral human being, returning the 56-year-old man to his irresponsible youthful days. The writer also drops the comma after life to move matters along, and he inserts the serial (or Oxford) comma after universe to help the reader manage three long phrases of 10, 10, and 12 words.

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Friday, June 21, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 20: Ernest Hemingway on Being Hungry in Paris

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food.

So starts Ernest Hemingway's essay "Hunger was Good Discipline" in A Moveable Feast (1964), a memoir about his Paris years, published three years after his death. This 41-word sentence is striking for several reasons:

The use of you. This thrice-used rhetorical device would get under an English teacher's skin, but Hemingway brings his readers into the experience, regardless of whether they have visited Paris.
The verb got. The vernacular might irritate a stylist looking for elegance of expression, but it is plain, understandable language.
The adverbs very and such. Most writing instructors say that adverbs are often usually useless. True, these words do not add much value to the description, but they complement the colloquial style.
Nondescript words like good and things. Why not at least delicious instead of good to describe the food in the window? What about croissants or macaroons or crusty bread to replace things? Because Hemingway trusts us to imagine what we will.
No commas. A grammar snob would call for at least one comma after windows, and arguably another one after Paris. But Hemingway wants to move us along a bit quicker to the next sentence.
Redundancies. Bakeries could cover for bakery shops, and on the sidewalk eliminates the need for outside. Here Hemingway wants a rhythm to the sentence that is better served by the verbiage.
Plain sense words. We saw and smelled the food. We do not need much more for our eyes to be riveted on the bakery window as the open door releases an irresistible aroma of freshly baked bread. We've been there, done that; we had the multi-sensory experience without the author needing to say more than he did.

This sentence reminds us that we are all capable of writing if we capture interesting human reactions to the world we encounter.

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Friday, June 14, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 19: Robert Penn Warren on Reading Fiction

Robert Penn Warren concludes the second paragraph of his essay "Why Do We Read Fiction?" (Saturday Evening Post, October 20, 1962) with this non-sentence:

To put it bluntly: no conflict, no story.

Why would a renowned writer and educator write a sentence fragment and break two other standard English grammar rules, flawed though they are (beginning a sentence with a verb and using a colon after a phrase)? I can think of at least three reasons.

First, as Robert Penn Warren, he can get away with it. A poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist, he can take literary license to drive home a point or surprise the reader by altering grammatical conventions.

Second, the fragment follows the previous sentence nicely:

And the experience that is characteristically presented in a story is that of facing a problem, a conflict.

Notice, again, Warren's contempt for four other standards: (1) don't begin a sentence with and: (2) avoid passive voice, as in is presented; (3) avoid awkward constructions, such as is that of; and (4) don't drop clarifying words, such as in which is before a conflict.

Third, Warren trusts that his readers want as much plain speak as they can get in a deeply theoretical article. And what are fragments but plain speech? Got it?

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