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emsemsems's review against another edition
3.0
‘—Ruskin’s earlier sentences you can see, or hear, his prose machinery—as he got older his sentences became looser, less fretful to impress by their elaborate self-command. Virginia Woolf once wrote about him: “We find ourselves marvelling at the words, as if all the fountains of the English language had been set playing in the sunlight for our pleasure.” —fountains have been set to send out a more violent spray, or someone has introduced a foaming agent into the pools below. (Anne Carson: “Foam is the sign of an artist who has sunk his hands into his own story, and also of a critic storming and raging in his own deep theory.”)’
Overall, brilliantly written, but I’d argue that one’s reaction to Dillon’s collection of essays , or rather – level of (bibliophilic?) ‘enjoyment’ would depend on how much each of those mentioned work/writers interest one. I like some more than the others, as is to be expected. And admittedly, my expectations for this collection were quite high (for several reasons). Perhaps I should’ve started with [b:Affinities: On Art and Fascination|62214100|Affinities On Art and Fascination|Brian Dillon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1662050777l/62214100._SX50_.jpg|98012950], which I’m still keen to read. But in any case, thanks for reminding me to (re)read those other books, I suppose?
‘Didion is frequently described as an exact and exacting writer, building her prose like a shiny carapace, easy to admire and hard to crack if you’re hoping to emulate it. At the same time, she has a reputation for being, on the page and in person, brittle and neurasthenic, spectral and barely there. None of this adequately describes her prose. It is usually direct and declarative, it is filled with parallelisms and rhythmic repetitions, there is a wealth of concrete detail. Irony in her work consists largely of the plain statement of such detail, inflected by the innocent, mad or bad-faith language of the people or institutions she is writing about. Sometimes she leaves this plane for another, more abstracted or metaphorical, gothic even.’
‘“Happy but anomalous coexistence”—“happy” here means apt, fortunate and pleasing, rather than pleased, or (nearly vanished sense) happenstance. I like the way this third term in the sentence’s brief inventory—the most concrete term, but not so very concrete—has been elongated, allowed to spread itself around. The absence of stricturing commas around “but anomalous” is in line with Didion’s later style: she knows better than most when to leave out the commas for which other writers (or their editors) instinctively reach, to let grammar and a certain sonic ease do their work. The sentence sounds like Didion: in its rhythm, care and thrift, then also in the swerve towards something more troubling or mysterious, the suggestion in the final phrase of an impish curating personality at work in the house. Was I right to think about the sentence in this way?’
Dillon’s wonderfully obsessive views and thoughts on ‘sentences’ make one (or at least me) appreciate ‘great/well-considered writing’. Not that precisely, but more like it makes ‘bad writing’ more obvious and unbearable. I was reading Dillon’s book while also reading a book I will not mention the title of (but a book written about a chef that I was interested in knowing more about (but the writing was simply ‘unbelievable’; disappointing to say the least—tone, structure, diction, just everything about it really)). I know they tend to say that ‘bad art’ is better than ‘mediocre art’, but I’ll take ‘mediocre writing’ over ‘bad writing’ on any given day, because at least if I’m made ‘bored’ quickly by ‘mediocrity’, I would stop and save myself time. My reaction towards ‘bad writing’ is (much to my disadvantage) usually ‘disbelief’. As in — I can’t believe how someone is able to so confidently, so inconsiderately and so selfishly publish something half-arsedly. And then I waste time trying to ‘prove’ things that don’t need to be proven. And then I scratch at my heart thinking about felled trees.
‘She learned to hold on to her words, running them through until they sounded right and therefore were right—
‘The arrangement of the words matters; and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.’ — Didion, ‘Why I Write’.’
I would have rated Dillon’s book higher if he had chosen the ‘right’ Brönte to write about. It’s as simple and as mad as that. These are just my personal thoughts as a reader anyway. As a pretty compulsive reader, rarely films impress me more than the books they were adapted from (and I think many who ‘read’ similarly would share this sentiment as well); but I have to admit that Cary Joji Fukunaga performed wild ‘magic’ when he did that thing he did to ‘Jane Eyre’ (2011?). The story/plot is still awful, but the cinematography is quite absurd (a compliment that).
‘“The drug wrought.”—not exactly the digressive equal of De Quincey’s elaborate style—(Charlotte) Brontë’s modest sentence might mean: the drug worked, or went to work, performed its usual or intended function. The sentence could as easily mean that the drug went to work on, influenced or manipulated, the raw material of Lucy Snowe’s imagination—it worked her as though she were metal to be moulded or beaten, stone or wood to be carved—The glorious and sinister diorama of Lucy Snowe’s night in the Royal Park: it has all been wrought by opium. Or is it rather, again: the reality worked by opium, heightened or intensified? All of these meanings are present, all of them complementing and contending with each other, inside this tiny, concentrated sentence—As if the sentence contains a pun: the drug wrote.’
(Fully ‘unhinged’ paragraph ahead about the only Brontë (not Charlotte, obviously) that interests me (possibly an understatement); so skip/skim this part to save your own sanity; it is a consciously self-indulgent ‘rant’) To me, Dillon chose the ‘wrong’ Brontë to write/rave about. ‘You Want It Darker’ (Leonard Cohen), or rather, I want it darker. Personally, I think all the Brontës are pretty ‘subpar’ (understatement) when it comes to ‘plot’ (understandably; and considering ‘everything’, they probably did their ‘best’). But one of them seems to be conscious of it/hers, and it is as if it’s her way of using it as a tool to ‘play a joke’ on her readers. Having read that novel (loosely counting) over three times, I am convinced of it. The ‘plot’ and most of the ‘sub-plots’ are just a butchered up and patched together ‘collage’ of ‘village gossip’. It’s all a sublime blur, but it is also her/a masterpiece. And she also gave the/her best lines to the (false (I would argue)) ‘villain’ of the novel. Georges Bataille thought of her as one of the greatest writers ever; and he knew exactly what she was up to, calling [b:Wuthering Heights|32929156|Wuthering Heights|Emily Brontë|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1478641029l/32929156._SY75_.jpg|1565818] ‘deceptively romantic’/pseudo-romantic (or something along those lines; perhaps 'darker' even). She used Northern dialects in her writing and ‘fought’ to keep them in even though her ‘sister’ (which of course, like the majority, Dillon seemed to like best) edited them out after her death (but the publishers were like wait what, what the fuck that actually that takes away the fucking ‘soul’ of the novel (and characters) if you do that, so we are putting the original texts back in like the author would have wanted) because ‘if you want to love me, you got to learn my language(s) of love’ kind of way? The beauty of her writing lies in between the lines. She’s the (excuse my language, but)
Spoiler
‘cuntiest of cunts’Spoiler
the act of hammering hell out of the Grim Reaper’s bollocks when one writes/talks about a work of that sort of calibre. Sentences will come like a (par-?)conscious stream of ‘misfires’.Spoiler
(This is more of a ‘note-to-self’, but) As soon as I’ve finished ‘writing’ my current views of WH (which ‘fluffed up’ old ‘memories’ of previous readings), I now realised that I no longer feel the same way about WH (the way I felt/wrote about it in my ‘review’ over there; I still fucking ‘love’ it, but differently – for instance, I think I was too careless to simply refer to Heathcliff as a ‘lover’ (if there is one in WH, which I don’t think there is; and that is also why I love the bad reviews’ because if you don’t like WH, it probably means that you want something more from it — it ‘frustrates’ you, and you hate it with a passion (what is it that you want? And why did one have to assume it to be a ‘love story’? Why does it have to be one? The first few critics hated it so much that they called it a ‘virgin’s story’ and insinuated that Ellis Bell (author’s pseudonym) should ‘kill himself’ for writing WH. Clearly, you can see why Georges Bataille loves WH so much, no? If it has the ‘power’ to make Victorian (and contemporary) readers both hot and bothered with not only ‘it’/WH, and the author, but also ‘death’?) just because (conventionally romantic) ‘love’ is just material for ‘parody’ (of society/social issues and more) in WH (I can’t say more without ‘spoilers’)) which is also why I am 99.98% (always leaving room for possibilities?) sure that all film adaptations of WH would ultimately fail knowing that they need such ‘romantic’ elements to ‘market’ such films (biased opinion of course, as I would never and have never watched any WH film adaptations); but in any case, I suppose that’s the ‘beauty’ of WH, it just never stops ‘haunting’ one.)But still, I admire and appreciate how much Dillon cares about (literary) ‘style’, fully knowing that too many writers don’t. Sometimes I wonder (whenever I encounter ‘bad’ writing/books) if it’s just a lack of a trustworthy/competent editor, or is it just a matter of overconfidence and stubbornness. Or worse — is it just a don’t-really-give-a-fuck approach to ‘writing’ with a side of ‘unpicky’/tragic ‘taste’ at that?
‘We do an injustice to Billie Holiday, writes (Elizabeth) Hardwick, if we imagine the value of her art to lie in the lyrics of the songs she sang. “Her message was otherwise. It was style.” Which is to say—what? That she was ultimately in control of her art, or quite the opposite? For what is style if not precisely the oscillation, a refusal to choose, between mastery and accident, between determined artifice and ineludible character? Hardwick liked to say that all her first drafts read as if they’d been written by a chicken. There was a deal of labour involved in becoming otherwise, in seeming or sounding not-chicken enough, and the sentence dramatises that effort, for it was also a work of affinity and solicitude.’
In any case, I think anyone who doesn’t ‘read’ much would surely benefit a fair amount from reading Dillon’s book (even if only to ‘know’ better about how ‘sentences’ function in writing; and to be aware of the fact that ‘good’/well-composed sentences actually take a significant deal of effort/thought/work). But even for readers who ‘read’ more (and/or have read the texts/books mentioned in the book), this is still a pleasantly refreshing read. A lot of what Dillon ‘preached’ in these essays resonate with me a fair bit. I believe in the musicality in/of writing. That is in a way a more pretentious way of saying ‘style’ I suppose? Do it wrongly/badly, and it’s like being stuck with an awfully annoying narrator pummeling unbearable trash into your ears/head. But when done ‘right’? Sublime as fuck. Transcendental. Haunting. Everlasting. (I am fully aware that I fall into the former category, but this is just a random/casual review/thoughts on a book and not some published thing, so leave me be.)
‘Observe the economies of the sentence: the solid paired adjectives, for a start. How strange, you might say, after the convoluting movements—How to describe such intricate experiences, even vexingly opaque or discombobulating experiences, in language that will take your reader there but allow her to remain sufficiently calm and distant that it all makes sense? In his minor art of jazz criticism, or jazz description, Whitney Balliett invents the most compact and recursive structure, which holds up phrases of extreme daring. The sentence remains mysterious, which is perhaps why, when I first copied it out to serve as the heading for this fragment, I must have tried unconsciously to multiply, somehow thus to explain, its effects: “Parker’s medium-tempo blues had a glittering, monolithic quality, and his fast blues were multiplications of his slow blues were multiplications of his slow blues.’
‘(Elizabeth) Hardwick’s syntax is seamless—seductive, but the sentence is rattled by the ghost of an ambiguity that is general in her writing—the grotesquerie was not even his own, which in itself is grotesque. Subclauses are frequently strange and estranging in Hardwick; as Wayne Koestenbaum puts it in a short essay on his love for her sentences, an interjection or aside may arrive “like a great raw piece of beef soliciting our appetite.’
curiosophie's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
It's a good thing Brian Dillon wrote a book called Affinities, because he sure does love that word.
kjboldon's review
4.0
A deep.dive into a variety of writers' sentences, perhaps too esoteric for anyone but those deeply invested in the craft of writing and the exercise of reading carefully. This is an uncommon reader.
jesslynsukamto's review
4.0
Twenty seven sentences, characteristically singled out from many of remarkable authors, and some that allows a certain retrospect and analysis beyond the tangent of the author's own interpretation, which is insightful and amusingly delightful.
"Traditions of Air" by John Ruskin, "A Ritual Feat" by Annie Dillard, and "The Cunning of Destruction" were the ones that served the apt curiosity and mostly, profound excitement, for they allow a certain self-introspect in analytic quality and tender literation in just a sentence. Others serve its justice in providing its distinctive details about authors that we may never come to notice nor assume.
Dillon clones profiles of his preferred writers, some inviting enough to pursue, others to flee from at once. Either way, the profiles are vivid, sticky and always manage to find a memorable, if difficult, phrase that opens a door to meandering thought.
"Traditions of Air" by John Ruskin, "A Ritual Feat" by Annie Dillard, and "The Cunning of Destruction" were the ones that served the apt curiosity and mostly, profound excitement, for they allow a certain self-introspect in analytic quality and tender literation in just a sentence. Others serve its justice in providing its distinctive details about authors that we may never come to notice nor assume.
Dillon clones profiles of his preferred writers, some inviting enough to pursue, others to flee from at once. Either way, the profiles are vivid, sticky and always manage to find a memorable, if difficult, phrase that opens a door to meandering thought.