So we don't fall too in love with sentences
A necessary follow-up to Gary Lutz's "The Sentence Is a Lonely Place." Colson Whitehead, the man who brought us "Finally, a Thin President," writes for Harper's this month on sentence greatness. Saul Bellow's "I am an American, Chicago born" opening line makes the cut.
There it is in all its Bellovian glory, the bluster and bombast! Can you smell it? The musk of a virile sentence drawing blood into itself? It is about to spread the labia of mediocrity and rut with the ineffable. We could all do worse than to write like Saul Bellow. And when I say write like Saul Bellow, I mean be Saul Bellow. And when I say be Saul Bellow, I mean unzip the skin from his body and wear it as a sort of Saul Bellow suit so that we can get cozy in it and truly inhabit it and understand the Old Macher. Except he is dead. And he was quite short, so your ankles and wrists would poke out of the flesh suit as if you were some ruddy-cheeked schoolboy who has outgrown his uniform, grimly trudging home from the elementary school and dreaming that one day you will write and be free from all these dullards and their cruel jibes—
Where was I?
February 9th, 2009 at 8:45 PM
Speaking of feeling very overwhelmed by someone's talent, how about the Updike lovefest in the most recent New Yorker.
"Gods do not answer letters."
I felt like crying. I forgot how much I loved that piece.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:42 PM
Good story! Finally in my case. Read the piece for the first time yesterday during a bookmark run/purge. (And then came across it in Dan's blog — new to the blogroll tonight — an hour later.) For those yet to partake, link for the piece is here.
February 9th, 2009 at 11:43 PM
Just posted a note on FB about it… makes me wish it had made its way onto a plate or a postcard.
February 9th, 2009 at 11:51 PM
It's worth noting that Whitehead is parodying James Wood in the passage you cite.
February 14th, 2009 at 7:20 PM
Googling… stunned it's not on a T-shirt or poster yet. Not stunned Conde has no CafePress site, but still! You'd think some Red Sox fan would have it printed up Mothering Hut-style. … And for all my NYer reading, I never would've picked up on a James Wood parody. (James Woods, yes. James Wood, no.) Ten points for Newton.