If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.-- Adam Haslett, via Bookslut.
He's reviewing Stanley Fish's new book How to Write a Sentence, which may be the first non-obnoxious thing Fish has written in 30 years. Recalling my failures as a teacher of Comp 101, I think if I did it over again we would spend the first couple of weeks just writing sentences.
... Notice btw how Haslett's sentence isn't just a sentence about sentences, it's a sentence whose style mimics the styles it discusses: the "finding" clause parodies James's syntax and vocabulary, contrasted to the Hemingwayesque conclusion, "and shooting him dead." Well done.
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