Starting Your Commonplace Book with Stanley Fish - CompHacker

Stanley Fish's Top Five Sentences
By Nina Shen Rastogi (http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/01/24/stanley-fish-s-top-fivesentences.aspx)
In his new book, How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, literary critic, legal scholar, and New York Times online
columnist Stanley Fish offers readers a guided tour through some of the most beautiful, arresting sentences in the
English language. As an introduction to both sentence craft and sentence appreciation, it is—in novelist Adam Haslett's
words—"both deeper and more democratic" than Strunk & White's Elements of Style, celebrating everything from brief
epigrams to twisty, rambling digressions.
Fish describes how he carries sentences with him "as others might carry a precious gem or a fine Swiss watch."
Accordingly, Brow Beat asked Professor Fish for some of his favorite accoutrements, and he offered five from across
three centuries:
John Bunyan (from The Pilgrim's Progress, 1678): "Now he had not run far from his own door, but his wife and children
perceiving it, began crying after him to return, but the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying, Life! Life!
eternal life."
In this sentence, Bunyan makes us feel the cost paid by someone (anyone) who turns his back on the human ties
that bind and surrenders to the pull of a glory he cannot even see.
Jonathan Swift (from A Tale of a Tub, 1704): "Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it
altered her appearance for the worse."
Here, Swift forces us into a momentary fellowship ("you will hardly believe") with a moral blindness we must
finally reject.
Comment [C1]: Uses litotes—deliberate
understatement—to get the satirical effect that Fish
describes
Walter Pater (from The Renaissance, 1873): "To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the stream, to a
single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our lives
fines itself down."
The prose enacts Pater's lesson, teasing us repeatedly with the promise of clarity and stability of perception
before depositing us on a last word ("down") that points to further dissolution and fragmentation.
Ford Madox Ford (from The Good Soldier, 1915): "And I shall go on talking in a low voice while the sea sounds in the
distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars."
In this sentence, the personal voice of the narrator is absorbed by the sea sounds (a deliberate pun) that began
as background and end by taking over the scene of writing.
Gertrude Stein (from Lectures in America, 1935): "When I first began writing I felt that writing should go on I still do feel
that it should go on but when I first began writing I was completely possessed by the necessity that writing should go on
and if writing should go on what had commas and semi-colons to do with it what had commas to do with it what had
periods to do with it what had small letters and capitals to do with writing going on which was at the time the most
profound need I had in connection with writing."
Stein manages to defeat linear time by a circular pattern of repetition that arrests movement even as it moves
forward.
Comment [C2]: You could also say that there’s
asyndeton going on here—repetition with
emphasis, leading to the final most important word.
It’s a periodic sentence: the most important
elements of the sentence are at the end.
Comment [C3]: Also, the unadorned language of
the plain style, which has few modifiers and a
relatively simple sentence structure, underscores
the simplicity and power of nature depicted in the
sentence.
Comment [C4]: It’s also a running sentence: the
use of conjunctions like “and” and “but” give one a
sense that the sentence could continue on forever.
Which, of course, is the point of what she’s saying.

Other Examples of Stylistic Analyses:
Thus, if you’re drawn to Jonathan Swift’s biting satire in the sentence, “Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you
will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse,” then, Fish advises, “Put together two mildly
affirmative assertions, the second of which reacts to the first in a way that is absurdly inadequate.” He offers,
“Yesterday I saw a man electrocuted and it really was surprising how quiet he became.” Lame, and hardly Swift,
as Fish is the first to admit, but identifying the logical structure does specify how satire functions at the level of
the sentence and, if you want to employ the form, that’s a good thing to know. [ . . . ]
Why is this important? Because the form and rhythm of sentences communicates as much meaning as their
factual content, whether we’re conscious of it or not. In 1863, when General Grant took the city of Vicksburg,
Mississippi, the last hindrance to free passage of Union supplies along the river, President Lincoln wrote in a
letter to be read at a public meeting: “The father of waters again goes unvexed to the sea.” It’s a poem of a
sentence, “The father of waters” and “unvexed to the sea” perfectly balanced on the unexpected pivot of “again
goes” rather than “goes again”, and all in the service of a metaphor that figures the Union as an inevitable
force and the Confederacy as a blight on nature, without mentioning either. If cadence had no content, “Union
supplies lines are now clear” would have the same power. And what is obvious in rhetoric is true in literature, as
well.
Take the first sentence of David Foster Wallace’s story, “The Depressed Person”: “The depressed person was in
terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a
component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.” By mixing heightened feeling and
unrelenting repetition (“pain”, “pain”, “pain”) with a Latinate, clinically declarative voice (“component”,
“contributing factor”), Wallace delivers his readers right where he wants them: inside the hellish disconnect
between psychic pain and the modern means of describing it. The rhythm of the sentence is perfectly
matched to its positive content. Indeed, from a writer’s point of view the two aren’t separate. If we could
separate meaning from sound, we’d read plot summaries rather than novels.
Wallace’s anxious, perseverating sentences are arguably the most innovative in recent American literature. But
take a writer who couldn’t be further from his self-conscious showmanship – William Trevor – and listen to a
sentence early in his story “A Day”. “It was in France, in the Hotel St-Georges during their September holiday
seven years ago, that Mrs. Lethwes found out about her husband’s other woman.” Here, the barely perceptible
aural effect is all about sequence. Mrs Lethwes may be the subject of the sentence but Trevor weighs her
down under the qualifying weight of time before she ever appears to then discover her fate. He does this over
and over in the story. The reader may never notice it but when we talk about Trevor’s elegiac tone, this is what
we mean. Not simply that he writes sad stories but that the pathology of his characters has been worked
down in to the rhythm of his sentences.
[From “The Art of Good Writing” by Adam Haslitt, a review of Stanley Fish’s new book, at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8c60799c-24e2-11e0-895d-00144feab49a.html#axzz1CA4TZ5jZ]

MODELS FOR YOU—
Please follow these 3 formats for your entries in the Commonplace Book:
Howlers
Citation: Williams, Terry Tempest. “What Love Looks Like: A Conversation with Tim DeChristopher.” Orion
Magazine, vol 31.1(Jan/Feb 2012): 41.
The Original: “From the moment I heard about Bidder #70 raising his paddle inside a BLM auction to outbid oil
and gas companies in the leasing of Utah’s public lands, I recognized Tim DeChristopher as a brave, creative
citizen-activist. That was on December 19, 2008, in Salt Lake City. Since that moment, Tim has become a
thoughtful, dynamic leader of his generation in the climate change movement.”
Analysis and Revision: Characters, Actions, Emphasis, first 7-8 words. “On December 19, 2008, in Salt Lake City,
Tim DeChristopher raised the paddle of Bidder #70 inside a BLM auction to outbid oil and gas companies in the
leasing of Utah’s public lands. Since that moment, this brave, creative citizen-activist in the climate change
movement has become a thoughtful, dynamic leader of his generation.”
Analyses
Citation: Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1960. Chapter 16-17, when Atticus
is cross-examining Bob Ewell about his actions the night of his daughter’s attack.
The Original: “‘Mr. Ewell,’ Atticus began, ‘folks were doing a lot of running that night. Let’s see, you say you ran
to the house, you ran to the window, you ran inside, you ran to Mayella, you ran for Mr. Tate. Did you, during all
this running, run for a doctor?’”
Analysis: Harper Lee, through Atticus, uses asyndeton in the passage. By beginning each clause with you ran, it’s
a parallel structure that adds emphasis each time as he builds to the final point. This type of series is important
in the underlying motive of the statement. Atticus is trying to emphasize that Mr. Ewell should have run for a
doctor. By using asyndeton, he is saying that you ran here, you ran there, and I could go on and on pointing out
where you did run, but the most important thing is that you didn’t run to the doctor.
Comment [C5]: Full MLA citation
Comment [C6]: Some brief context to help us
understand what’s going on and how the quote fits
in.
Comment [C7]: Names the trope, scheme, or
figure being used
Comment [C8]: Shows how it works
Comment [C9]: Shows what the rhetorical effect
of the passage is
Imitations
Citation: Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1960. Chapter 16-17, when Atticus
is cross-examining Bob Ewell about his actions the night of his daughter’s attack.
The Original: “‘Mr. Ewell,’ Atticus began, ‘folks were doing a lot of running that night. Let’s see, you say you ran
to the house, you ran to the window, you ran inside, you ran to Mayella, you ran for Mr. Tate. Did you, during all
this running, run for a doctor?’”
Analysis and Imitation: Asyndeton: “‘Boys,’ the coach began, ‘this team has been doing a lot of scoring on us
today. Let’s see, they scored on a free kick, they scored on a header, they scored on a penalty kick, they scored
on a cross, they even scored on a blocked shot. Did you, during all their scoring, score any of your own?’”
Comment [C10]: Still names the trope, scheme,
or figure being used.
Comment [C11]: Matches the structure of the
original, but substitutes some new content that seems
equally relevant. Choose content that can benefit
from the form just as much as the original does.