If you haven't found an AI-generated sentence and thought to yourself, "Damn, that's a good sentence," then you are not using AI right. True, these are fairly rare, but the same can be said for human sentences.
We understand the encoding of genetic sequences, the folding of proteins to construct the cells of the body, and even a good deal about how epigenetic switches control these processes. And yet we still do not understand what happens when we read a sentence. Meaning is not neuronal calculus in the brain, or the careful smudges of ink on a page, or the areas of light and dark on a screen. Meaning has no mass or charge. It occupies no space-and yet meaning makes a difference in the world.
My favorite sentence, attributed to Ernest Hemingway, yet never confirmed, has six words and is a complete short story. "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." The common interpretation is that the baby died, but my interpretation is that after giving birth she decides to put the baby up for adoption. All her hopes for her child existed in those shoes. The reader gives the meaning.
Hemingway's mantra was to write the perfect sentence. It would be interesting to have dinner with him, James Joyce, Jon Fosse, and Mark Twain.
I am enjoying your column immensely, and once I can afford it, ill upgrade my subscription. I am staying on subscript mainly because of you, a young Hudson River Valley writer named Justin, and the fact that two of my favorite writers are Sherman Alexie and Et
Two of the great classic writers are SVirginia Woolf and Jean Toomer whose sentence beginning his masterpiece , CANE, the fulcrum of the HARLEM RENAISSANCE,
These two writers have provided me with so many moments of amazement, moments when I have to stop reading, gaze into space, and marvel at their ability to put words together in such a unique way. Although not a great book, I'm surprised Shields book "Swann" hasn't garnered more praise.
I used to copy favorite sentences into a notebook so that I could keep rereading them. I lost the notebook in one of my many moves. Recently enjoyed particular sentences in The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers. I'll admit that when I read a cliche in a book it detracts from my enjoyment of the book.
Jun 11, 2023·edited Jun 11, 2023Liked by John Warner
The first thing I thought of was the opening of Light Years by James Salter, which begins:
"We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back."
Salter's second paragraph is just as good.
Music critic Amanda Petrusich makes stellar sentences all the time. Her recent tribute to Tina Turner is one example; but the one I come back to again and again is her loving farewell to John Prine, which ends like this:
"Prine had one of those faces that doesn’t come along very often—beautiful, rutted, expressive. He always looked just a little bemused, in part because his eyes were narrowed and slightly arched, curled into a sort of permanent smile. It takes an exceptionally kind-hearted person to sing the whole messy, stupid story of what it means to be human—the cruel and indulgent things we do, the way that we love—and make it sound so logical. I don’t know if there’s a word for what people felt when they saw him play; it’s the kind of soft gratitude that wells up when you look at someone and feel only thankful that they exist, and that you got to breathe the same air for a little while. Those losses are the hardest to metabolize. But it helps to think of Prine in the heaven he imagined, which is the heaven he deserves."
P.S.
The rest of Ducks, Newburyport is fantastic, by the way. It took me a while to find its frequency, but once I did, I thought it was spellbinding.
Ohhhh I also have a few notebooks full of quotes and now use Readwise with great joy. Some of my more recent favourite sentences come from Vasily Grossman’s “Stalingrad” which, much like Moby Dick (another favourite), elevates what might be a dry topic (I learned SO MUCH about the mechanics behind a supply line in a major war) with absolutely glorious prose. One of the ones I have saved is:
“As the planes coming from north, west, east and south met over Stalingrad, they began their descent. It seemed, however, to be the sky itself that was descending – sagging, as if under dark, heavy storm clouds, under the vast weight of metal and explosives it now bore.”
Un-Su Kim’s The Cabinet also made me stop a few times to reread sentences because the felt quite...lush.
My favorite sentence is something that I haven't considered, I will think on that for awhile! I can't remember a time when I didn't love reading, but I remember when I learned to love sentences: in middle school I contracted pneumonia and was out of class for nearly a month. My mom put her copy of Pride and Prejudice in my hands and my reading suddenly went from the story level to the sentence level. Reading has never been the same
I didn't have the same rapturous feelings about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow that many people had (I liked it find but didn't love it) but I thought this line was a perfect sentence: “Other people’s parents are often a delight.” It says SO MUCH in just seven words.
In reading your description of Septology, I have to confess that my instant reaction to your description of it being one continuous sentence was "oh, absolutely not". I was a bit surprised by the strength of my reaction but then I wondered if it might have something to do with having my having ADHD? I don't know if this is true or not, but it feels like a book with not sentence breaks requires a kind of sustained attention that feels kind of exhausting to me in theory. I'll have to think about that some more.
Writer of great sentences? Donna Tartt by a mile. Here’s one of many, many examples: the protagonist of THE SECRET HISTORY is falling in love with a girl called Camilla:
“The light from the window was streaming directly into her face; in such strong light most people look somewhat washed out, but her clear, fine features were only illuminated until it was a shock to look at her, at her pale and radiant eyes with their sooty lashes, at the gold glimmer at her temple that blended gradually into her glossy hair, warm as honey.”
It begs you to read it aloud and savour every word.
after Joe Chaikin suffered a stroke, Jean-Claude van Itallie wrote a play on the subject(s) entitled "The Traveler" (1987). as the protagonist struggles with aphasia-like symptoms, he re-discovers language rules and announces his wonder and triumph at re-learned linguistic construction with the following double entendre, which has stayed with me ever since: "It is a sentence coming to earth".
also: interested readers may want to check out Friedrich Durrenmatt's tight read "The Assignment"; each of the twenty-four chapters is one complete sentence.
I just finished reading John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, which was impressive at both the narrative and the sentence level. Galsworthy has some purely poetic sentences, and sentences that are the jabs of a slender knife. Another writer whose sentences I admire is James Baldwin, who, for me, is the pinnacle of artistic and intellectual achievement.
I think I learned the most about how sentences work from David Lodge's The Art of Fiction. In continuing my ongoing "mostly dead white guys from England theme," I still hold that my favorite writers of English prose are Orwell and CS Lewis (and I'd love to see an updated "Politics and the English Language" focused on AI). There's a line in one of the Chronicles of Narnia (and I have spent perhaps an inordinate amount of time this morning trying to track it down--I know it's on the verso of the page, about halfway down, but I no longer remember which book) that describes a man with a sandwich and a cup of tea and a cigarette and a match and his attempts to get the appropriate items lined up in his two hands, all of which is a metaphor for something someone else is trying to do--only Lewis makes it elegant and utterly clear, whereas I've botched it completely.
If you haven't found an AI-generated sentence and thought to yourself, "Damn, that's a good sentence," then you are not using AI right. True, these are fairly rare, but the same can be said for human sentences.
Reading just now:
We understand the encoding of genetic sequences, the folding of proteins to construct the cells of the body, and even a good deal about how epigenetic switches control these processes. And yet we still do not understand what happens when we read a sentence. Meaning is not neuronal calculus in the brain, or the careful smudges of ink on a page, or the areas of light and dark on a screen. Meaning has no mass or charge. It occupies no space-and yet meaning makes a difference in the world.
-Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think
My favorite sentence, attributed to Ernest Hemingway, yet never confirmed, has six words and is a complete short story. "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." The common interpretation is that the baby died, but my interpretation is that after giving birth she decides to put the baby up for adoption. All her hopes for her child existed in those shoes. The reader gives the meaning.
Hemingway's mantra was to write the perfect sentence. It would be interesting to have dinner with him, James Joyce, Jon Fosse, and Mark Twain.
I am enjoying your column immensely, and once I can afford it, ill upgrade my subscription. I am staying on subscript mainly because of you, a young Hudson River Valley writer named Justin, and the fact that two of my favorite writers are Sherman Alexie and Et
etgar keret.
Two of the great classic writers are SVirginia Woolf and Jean Toomer whose sentence beginning his masterpiece , CANE, the fulcrum of the HARLEM RENAISSANCE,
John Banville, Carol Shields
These two writers have provided me with so many moments of amazement, moments when I have to stop reading, gaze into space, and marvel at their ability to put words together in such a unique way. Although not a great book, I'm surprised Shields book "Swann" hasn't garnered more praise.
I used to copy favorite sentences into a notebook so that I could keep rereading them. I lost the notebook in one of my many moves. Recently enjoyed particular sentences in The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers. I'll admit that when I read a cliche in a book it detracts from my enjoyment of the book.
The first thing I thought of was the opening of Light Years by James Salter, which begins:
"We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back."
Salter's second paragraph is just as good.
Music critic Amanda Petrusich makes stellar sentences all the time. Her recent tribute to Tina Turner is one example; but the one I come back to again and again is her loving farewell to John Prine, which ends like this:
"Prine had one of those faces that doesn’t come along very often—beautiful, rutted, expressive. He always looked just a little bemused, in part because his eyes were narrowed and slightly arched, curled into a sort of permanent smile. It takes an exceptionally kind-hearted person to sing the whole messy, stupid story of what it means to be human—the cruel and indulgent things we do, the way that we love—and make it sound so logical. I don’t know if there’s a word for what people felt when they saw him play; it’s the kind of soft gratitude that wells up when you look at someone and feel only thankful that they exist, and that you got to breathe the same air for a little while. Those losses are the hardest to metabolize. But it helps to think of Prine in the heaven he imagined, which is the heaven he deserves."
P.S.
The rest of Ducks, Newburyport is fantastic, by the way. It took me a while to find its frequency, but once I did, I thought it was spellbinding.
Ohhhh I also have a few notebooks full of quotes and now use Readwise with great joy. Some of my more recent favourite sentences come from Vasily Grossman’s “Stalingrad” which, much like Moby Dick (another favourite), elevates what might be a dry topic (I learned SO MUCH about the mechanics behind a supply line in a major war) with absolutely glorious prose. One of the ones I have saved is:
“As the planes coming from north, west, east and south met over Stalingrad, they began their descent. It seemed, however, to be the sky itself that was descending – sagging, as if under dark, heavy storm clouds, under the vast weight of metal and explosives it now bore.”
Un-Su Kim’s The Cabinet also made me stop a few times to reread sentences because the felt quite...lush.
My favorite sentence is something that I haven't considered, I will think on that for awhile! I can't remember a time when I didn't love reading, but I remember when I learned to love sentences: in middle school I contracted pneumonia and was out of class for nearly a month. My mom put her copy of Pride and Prejudice in my hands and my reading suddenly went from the story level to the sentence level. Reading has never been the same
I didn't have the same rapturous feelings about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow that many people had (I liked it find but didn't love it) but I thought this line was a perfect sentence: “Other people’s parents are often a delight.” It says SO MUCH in just seven words.
In reading your description of Septology, I have to confess that my instant reaction to your description of it being one continuous sentence was "oh, absolutely not". I was a bit surprised by the strength of my reaction but then I wondered if it might have something to do with having my having ADHD? I don't know if this is true or not, but it feels like a book with not sentence breaks requires a kind of sustained attention that feels kind of exhausting to me in theory. I'll have to think about that some more.
Writer of great sentences? Donna Tartt by a mile. Here’s one of many, many examples: the protagonist of THE SECRET HISTORY is falling in love with a girl called Camilla:
“The light from the window was streaming directly into her face; in such strong light most people look somewhat washed out, but her clear, fine features were only illuminated until it was a shock to look at her, at her pale and radiant eyes with their sooty lashes, at the gold glimmer at her temple that blended gradually into her glossy hair, warm as honey.”
It begs you to read it aloud and savour every word.
after Joe Chaikin suffered a stroke, Jean-Claude van Itallie wrote a play on the subject(s) entitled "The Traveler" (1987). as the protagonist struggles with aphasia-like symptoms, he re-discovers language rules and announces his wonder and triumph at re-learned linguistic construction with the following double entendre, which has stayed with me ever since: "It is a sentence coming to earth".
also: interested readers may want to check out Friedrich Durrenmatt's tight read "The Assignment"; each of the twenty-four chapters is one complete sentence.
I just finished reading John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, which was impressive at both the narrative and the sentence level. Galsworthy has some purely poetic sentences, and sentences that are the jabs of a slender knife. Another writer whose sentences I admire is James Baldwin, who, for me, is the pinnacle of artistic and intellectual achievement.
Brian Doyle, One Long River of Song…beautiful, soul-stirring writing.
I think I learned the most about how sentences work from David Lodge's The Art of Fiction. In continuing my ongoing "mostly dead white guys from England theme," I still hold that my favorite writers of English prose are Orwell and CS Lewis (and I'd love to see an updated "Politics and the English Language" focused on AI). There's a line in one of the Chronicles of Narnia (and I have spent perhaps an inordinate amount of time this morning trying to track it down--I know it's on the verso of the page, about halfway down, but I no longer remember which book) that describes a man with a sandwich and a cup of tea and a cigarette and a match and his attempts to get the appropriate items lined up in his two hands, all of which is a metaphor for something someone else is trying to do--only Lewis makes it elegant and utterly clear, whereas I've botched it completely.