Arts An Earnest Response to Matt, Jude Fawley, Dougsf, Charles, and Julia Bovee, Who Are Probably Nice, Good People, But Who Are Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
posted by January 16 at 18:55 PM
onI saw a paragraph hanging in a window in San Francisco a couple days ago, a paragraph that I’ve been turning over in my mind for years, and I wrote here on Slog that “everything you need to know about writing—and everything you need to know about life—is in that paragraph,” and Matt in the comments said that this was “a patently untrue statement” and that I did “not mean it in earnest” and he wanted to know: “So why bother writing it? I am genuinely curious.” And someone named Jude Fawley seconded Matt, and Charles thirded Matt, and Julia Bovee (my weird new hater) fourthed Matt, all while Dougsf weighed in with his opinion that the paragraph in the window was “Myspace-blog level stuff.”
OK. I’ll bite. But you might want to skip this. This is going to get earnest and probably boring and won’t be interesting to anyone except Matt, Jude Fawley, Dougsf, Charles, and Julia Bovee, and maybe not even very interesting to them, owing to the earnestness and because my love for the paragraph—which I really do think has just about everything you need to know about writing in it—has much to do with stuff like em-dashes and subordinate clauses, and Lord knows what grief a person gets when, say, he writes in a column somewhere that he gets excited about punctuation. (I refer to the great Lydia-Davis’s-punctuation brouhaha of 2003.) This is mostly for you, Matt, but also for you Jude Fawley, and you Dougsf, and you Charles, and—oh, hey, Julia Bovee’s here too. Don’t remember inviting you, but here you are, all cowy and full of hate. Have a drink, everyone. Sit wherever.
Here’s the paragraph in question again, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald just before he died:
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within—that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.
These lines are so loaded I don’t know where to begin. The beginning? “Of course all life is a process of breaking down” is great because the “Of course…” is a confidently conversational way to start, often how you start when you’re talking to a friend at a party and you’re exaggerating something for the purposes of emphasis (“Of course Woody Allen hasn’t made a good movie in 20 years”) or you’re boldly stating as a fact something that is actually just opinion or conjecture (“Of course the Yankees are going to win”) or you’re using a cliche but you want to couch it in language that lets the other person know you know you’re using a cliche (“Of course it rains every day in Seattle”), but the “Of course” runs straight into “life is a process of breaking down,” which is not exaggerated or an opinion or a cliche but the biological truth, and something people rarely say to others, their friends included. In other words, you go into the sentence thinking you’re going to get one thing, but right off you get something else, and it’s something real, and it’s startling. If a reader thinks they’re going to get something in a sentence (or a character, or a plot) and then they do, they’ve been desposited into a cliche—which is not good writing. Good writing is: You think you’re going to get one thing, but you don’t.
“…[b]ut the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—” is great because it’s rhythmic and alliterative (“but the blows,” “do the dramatic”) but it doesn’t dress up in tap shoes and a tutu and say, “Hey everyone, I’m being rhythmic and alliterative!” It just sounds good/right. Also, several of the words echo (“blows,” “come,” “side”/”outside”) without calling lots of attention to the echoing. The echoing just comes across as simplicity (why reach for another word when what you mean is the word you just used?) and—this is sort of a reach, what the hell—making the words echo echoes the prevailing point about getting older, because the idea of an echo contains the idea of lapsed time. (A word appears early [in life/in the sentence] and then it appears again later [in life/in the sentence].)
“…[T]he ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once” is great because (1) “the ones you remember” makes you think of all the blows you’ve forgotten; (2) the “blame things on” is both a more complicated verb than “remember” (so you’re not expecting it) and yet it’s colloquial (again, unexpected), and it contains the biting suggestion that blaming whatever it is you’re choosing to blame is dishonest and weak; (3) the “and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about,” is funny and devastating and unexpected all rolled up into a couple words; and (4) the “don’t show their effect all at once” is the payoff for something that comes much earlier in the sentence, a promise that’s been suspended since the “but” after the first comma, but it’s a payoff you don’t expect, that leaves a lot unsaid, that raises further questions and, by doing so, draws you further in. The “…don’t show their effect all at once” gives me a funny feeling in my chest every time I read it, like I’m being lifted up by it, which is the same feeling I get at the end of a lot of great first sentences. (The first sentence of Joan Didion’s essay “Insider Baseball” comes immediately to mind—check it out sometime.)
After all that—those pyrotechnics in that first sentence—we get a very regular second sentence, not a complicated one or one where the grammar echoes the meaning or even one with alliteration or much in the way of rhythm. In other words, Fitzgerald’s saying: I realize that first sentence was super rich, have a glass of water now. This is a relief, and yet this second sentence seems a lot like the previous sentence, so there’s no interruption. The glory of the third sentence is that em-dash. Notice the way it doesn’t function like em-dashes usually do. “The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.” On any planet, that em-dash should be a semi-colon. Or it should be a period. But here it’s like a People Mover at the airport: it slides you forward without your doing anything. It sends you right into what should be the next sentence, carries you forward too quickly, against your will, as if you’re trapped in the forward-moving-ness of, well, you know, life, and getting older, and the process of breaking down, in spite of your every wish…
Aw, look. You’re asleep.
Explicatin' like a muthafucka.
You get an A+!
Bravo!
Snark and condescension are easy; being passionate about something (without the crutch of irony) are considered uncool.
So, while I didn't really care the first time this came up -- and still kinda don't, frankly -- it was a stirring defense that made this place just an eensy bit smarter.
Now, someone please call someone else Hitler, so we can wrap this up and move on!
man to second spanky, this blog just got bumped up a notch.
and, uh, stephanie=hitler.
man to second spanky, this blog just got bumped up a notch.
and, uh, stephanie=hitler.
After reading that I think I am sexually aroused. And yeah, the level of the blog just went up a little as well.
You're right about the em-dash. Feel free to write more about writing [semicolon; not an em-dash]; that was cool.
That was lovely.
If I didn't know ahead of time who wrote that paragraph I would've bet my annual salary that it was David Foster Wallace.
Interesting post.
Personally, I never listen to anyone who writes about punctuation who can't spell "em-dash".
This post is what "continue reading" jumps are made for, CF!
Amy, your feelings about that post is what your scroll function was designed for. I, for one, loved it.
awesome. really. an inspiring post that made my evening. the parsing of the paragraph--throwing off the rules when they did not work for them--was brilliant. christopher, you know a lot of logophiles that read the slog; its time to start a series deconstructing these things . . .
much more interesting than stranger versus weekly page counts (as if there was a contest)
This was about 1000 times better than your regular writing, Frizzelle (of course, this may also be the first time you've written in your voice, instead of trying to imitate someone more famous.)
Joshua, you're right: "em-dash." Fixed.
Fuck the cranky comments, Chris, this paragraphs *is* great, and thank you for appreciating its greatness. The first line alone is transcendent, and any stiff who can't recognize that fact should shut up and have another goddamn drink.
BTW, I still love your shroom article, and I swear to god I've smoked a bowl with that hippy in the bathrobe.
That's great. Let's have more.
But I think you give short shrift to the second sentence. It's no ordinary sentence--it's no mere glass of water. Possibly its power comes "almost without your knowing it," like the breakage it describes--but powerful it is nevertheless. Might it not be the climax of the whole shebang? Isn't the point that the Type 2 breakage makes you less of a man, forever, every bit as important as the point that it happens almost unknown to you but is realized suddenly?
Nicely done, Christopher.
Thanks Chris. Passion is good, and so is earnestness, so I appreciate your response. And, being a so-far unpublished writer myself, I respect your analysis of the writing.
However. I'd leave it at that, but since you singled me out among others, I'll note that you seem to not have addressed the real issue. I will make the argument that your nice post NOW actually supports what Matt and I, at least, were saying: your first post was a cliche, but in this post you are communicating.
Let me refer you to the original post:
You wrote: "Everything you need to know about writing—and everything you need to know about life—is in that paragraph."
Matt wrote: "I have a question: why do people say/write things like [what you wrote]? It is a patently untrue statement. And what's more, the writer knows it's not really true, and the reader knows it's not really true. Moreover, it is meant to be read knowing that the writer does not mean it in earnest. So why bother writing it? I am genuinely curious."
I wrote: "hmm, Matt has a point." etc.
My understanding was that Matt was commenting on YOUR sentence, not Fitzgerald's-yet you respond with an analysis of Fitzgerald's writing. Statements about "everything you need to know about writing, life" are cliches (which is interesting because your argument now is the F Scott goes beyond cliche).
Finally, your new post addresses only the first part of what you said, that everything you need to know about writing can be found in the lines cited. You focus almost entirely on the form of the language, and only allude to the substance. Unless you think writing is life and life is writing (sounds like another great cliche!), what I need to know in life is different from the use of irony, em-dashes, etc. For example, I would like to know how to get a greater understanding of my own habitual and compulsive psychological patterns - things I learned from childhood that I now project on the world, my lovers, my friends (this is just an example). Now, this line from Fitzgerald did not shed light on this to me, and your analysis does not change matters. Maybe the sentences actually do address this, but I missed it. So to me, you statement that everything I need to know about life is in this paragraph is simply false from my perspective.
Maybe I was taking you too literally, but you have to forgive me because understanding my life and the world is of somewhat urgent concern to me (I know that may sound self-absorbed but I can't think of a better way to put it). All this is to say that this is why I wrote, "hmm, Matt has a point."
Your post here is great, much better and more illuminating than your first, so thanks.
christopher,
i never realized that writing about writing could be so beautiful. in all my years of blog/bbs reading, i've never been moved to comment before, but that was really something. your passion for your craft shines through and touches those of us who don't delve as deeply into the process of constructing a truly compelling sentence. in addition to being a fantastic writer, you would make an inspiring teacher.
The quality of the paragraph does not bely the fact that it still does not "explain everything about writing" and certainly not "everything about life". It explains at best two or three things about writing and life.
And the paragraph itself starts off with an erroneous statement: "all life is a process of breaking down", which is simply not true, let alone worthy of a snide "Of course".
Why, Fnarf, is it simply not true?
The opening paragraph of Didion's "Insider BasebalI" is here...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=4280
The problem with your post is that, instead of capturing language as you might capture a deadly spider, you set it free and whirling where it may. Language is not better than people. Language is bad.
Hey, I didn't say I hated it, I'm just not a Smith's fan, that's all.
I enjoyed your writing on the passage actually quite a bit, Christopher.
Oh, and the “Myspace-blog level stuff” comment wasn't an attack on his writing prowess - (ironically, slog allows for nothing short of an en-dash?) God knows the man can write. The passage is just so replete with the term "you" (attached to experiences that aren't neccessarily universal), it's a style I've grown up associating with the sort of diary-left-open-on-the-couch-god-I-hope-someone-realizes-my-pain-makes-me-special we've all encountered during adolescents.
It's not his fault that's what I thought of, maybe it's the second day of a cold talking.
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