Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
I enoy the literary discussions on Ricochet. Each time we have one my reading list gets that much longer. In the past week or so we’ve talked about the most moving scenes in literature, the funniest scenes, and the books that have been turned into great movies -- and those are the ones I remember.
For years, I’ve been a collector of sentences.
Tom Clancy could put together a great plot, but his sentences were mostly leaden. D H. Lawrence’s novels are filled with animal passion, but the prose is horrid. Vince Flynn is a master of the well-written action scene, but we don’t read him for the beautiful prose (don’t get me wrong, he can really write).
Other writers are poetic, writing the occasional great sentence or paragraph, but their books just don’t hold together as stories.
The best writers combine plot, characterization, scene, dialogue, humor, and “felicitous” sentences. (Random House: “Felicitous: well-suited for the occasion, as an action, manner, or expression; apt . . . .”). Jane Austen may be the best at combining all the elements.
For the most part the great sentences I’ll quote below come from great pieces of literature, but a great sentence can exist in an inferior piece of writing.
What do I mean by a “great sentence”? They come in many varieties. Some perfectly describe an event or scene. Some are pure poetry. Some state with clarity a beautiful truth. Others are perfectly hilarious.
The opening line of Pride and Prejudice is “all the above”: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
In political writing, Mark Steyn and Jonah Goldberg create memorable, telling sentences.
The Bible is filled with great sentences. How about these three from just the first chapter of Ecclesiastes?:
“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.” [KJV Ecclesiastes 1:4]
“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” [KJV Ecclesiastes 1:7]
“For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” [KJV Ecclesiastes 1:18]
Great sentences can transform even the simplest scene into a spiritual moment. In Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Jim, the young narrator, and his friend Antonia visit two Russian bachelors eking out a living on poor, remote farmland. As they sit in the Russians’ ramshackle cabin, Jim, the young narrator, describes the sound of the wind (to be fair, there are three sentences here, but the first two lead in to the last one, which is perfect):
“The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others. They made me think of defeated armies, retreating; or of ghosts, who were trying desperately to get in for shelter, and then went moaning on.”
With its two similes and powerful verbs, Cather in this sentence creates an unforgettable image of the wind rolling across open prairie.
Consider a single sentence from the “The Martyr,” a short story by the Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutogawa. In 18 simple words, the author captures the essence of the passage of time:
“A year passed like a snowflake that falls into the river, a moment white and then gone forever.”
For the young, time is glacial. But for people like me, who long ago passed life’s mid-point, this sentence describes time as we now experience it: a brief white moment, then forever gone.
Or this very long sentence from the Robert Fagles translation of the Iliad, where Homer uses the advancing sea as a metaphor for the attacking Achean (Greek) army:
“As a heavy surf assaults some roaring coast,
piling breaker on breaker whipped by the West Wind,
and out on the open sea a crest first rears its head
then pounds down on the shore with hoarse,
rumbling thunder against some rocky spit, exploding salt foam to the skies—
so wave on wave they came, Achean battalions ceaseless surging on to war.”
Because the sea was a constant presence to the Acheans (they fought with their backs to the sea throughout the decade-long Trojan War), it is a perfect metaphor for inexorable Achean battalions surging forward to destroy Troy.
Finally, consider this sentence from Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. Ada and Inman, now reunited, contemplate their future together. A lesser writer might have written: “The prospect of long happy lives together stretched out before them.” Instead, Frazier found a vivid, beautiful way of saying much the same thing:
“They would grow old together measuring time by the life spans of a succession of speckled bird dogs.”
It's quite easy to tell a great sentence: after you read one, you think, "Wow! I could die happy if I'd written that."
The floor is yours. Who writes great sentences? Give us examples. What makes them great? [Note: Jane Austen sentences gratefully accepted in this thread].
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Comments:
Feb '12
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
I notice nobody has quoted it but given the circumstances of the past few days Dickens first sentence in A Tale of Two Cites captures all so well.. a tale of two worlds..
"IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
It still stands tall and sure.. and what a sentence!
May '12
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
tabula rasa
Casey: Joseph Conrad's Nostromo
31 minutes ago
And some people say that Conrad can't write. They need to read Nostromo. · 1 hour ago
Conrad was Polish, wrote in French, (and worked for a Dutch shipping company), so some of the credit goes to the translator.
Apr '11
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
Conrad was Polish, wrote in French, (and worked for a Dutch shipping company), so some of the credit goes to the translator. · 9 minutes ago
I'm no Conrad expert--I've only read Heart of Darkness, and that was in college (15 years ago). But I'm sure that he wrote in English. All the more impressive, given that he was Polish, and I believe French was his second language. He didn't learn English until his late twenties, and still managed to write like, well, Conrad.
Feb '12
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
Anne Rice paints a fill color masterpiece in the "Christ the Lord" pair of books "Out of Egypt" (2005) & "Road to Cana" (2008). I've been waiting for the 3rd book
Mar '11
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
I'm surprised no one has mentioned P. J. O'Rourke yet.
and
May '11
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
Percival: I'm surprised no one has mentioned P. J. O'Rourke yet.
and
21 minutes ago
+1 Another great one.
Apr '11
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
Who was the fellow who wrote
?
Aug '10
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
Matt Blankenship
Maybe that's why I like his short stories--seeTrouble Is My Business--the best.
Matt, your comments on Chandler have been excellent; I couldn't agree more.
I'm the one who introduced the idea that Chandler's plots don't hold together, and I want to make sure that this discourages absolutely no one from reading him! He is one of the treasures of anglospheric literature, and when he's on his game (which is just about always) no one's prose is more incandescent, more evocative, more sit-back-with-a-sigh satisfying.
Aug '10
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
All this Chandler talk, and I love him. But how we have forgotten about Dash Hammett, no great sentences , but his characters .... maybe we can speak of characters in the next groupthink. Take Joel Cairo.............
Apr '11
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
Is there a more ideal Cairo than Peter Lorre?
May '12
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
My sister gave me Refiner's Fire back in the late 70's, and I hated it, and I mean really hated it. Threw it across the room at one point and never finished it, but I don't remember why. Now I think I need to go back and give it another go, with 30 years behind me.
May '12
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
This is precisely why you can re-read Chandler forever--the intrigue is secondary, the prose and dialogue are evergreen.
Apr '11
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
dash
This is precisely why you can re-read Chandler forever--the intrigue is secondary, the prose and dialogue are evergreen.
I don't remember where I ran across it (obviously an anthology), but I read a report Chandler wrote of, I think, an Oscar ceremony, and it was tremendous. It's like reading Poe's literary criticism after reading his short stories. You come to realize that these guys are well-read, thinkers, and masters of the language, not merely popular schlock-meisters.
Jack London was very nearly a communist, and a racist (although probably pretty middle of the road for his time), but reading his reporting and philosophical musing gives an entirely different perspective than reading only his action/adventure fiction.
Apr '11
Re: Who Writes the Most Felicitous Sentences?
A few years back the boss was asking me about a customer's satisfaction, and I don't remember where this came from, but I told him,
(This likely deserves a conversation of its own.)