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A review by painalangoisse
Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon
3.0
I read Essayism recently and enjoyed it and expected this to be a similarly cohesive work. But it's not. My fundamental problem is with scope: each chapter (ranging from 2-10+ pages) has to decide whether to treat the formal structure of only the sentence at hand, situate it in some kind of context with regard to its author and time period, or engage in personal connection. I think the collection would cohere much better if a consistent approach was chosen; as is, Dillon writes about different concerns for each essay, while still gesturing towards the range of other issues he could tackle. The result is unbalanced. I found the essays best when they primarily addressed the sentence on the page - their putative subject, that is - as for example in the James Baldwin chapter. On the flip side, they're at their worst when the sentence is an excuse to rhapsodize about the author's biography and tendencies with only gestures towards the sentence at hand. In those cases, I found the work exhausting due to knowing too much about the authors to feel that these necessarily short portraits were anything like adequate. And that gets to my deeper issue with the work - who is its audience? Those who already know the expository information (ie, those with literary backgrounds) will be bored or frustrated; if other reviews are to be trusted, the general reader does not care for the formal analysis he (inconsistently and, in my view, inadequately) provides.
My other issue with this collection, particularly compared to Essayism, is the perspective. In Essayism, there was clear development of Dillon as a reader and as a writer, and this gave a sense of who was narrating the essays and why. His mode has changed in Suppose a Sentence - the work is necessarily personal given his (stated) interest in collecting sentences for himself. But as the work goes on, I find that he empties himself from his writing. The result is disappointing. If the work is indeed meant to be a personal enterprise, I feel it would work much better by explaining what makes each sentence compelling to HIM. There is an irony operating in his essay on Janet Malcolm - he describes her as fixated on atmosphere, a nebulous "sense" of things being critical to her writing. Well, he's the same way - all through the book we are receiving "senses" that become nebulous due to insufficient textual evidence and lack of well-explained reader response. But at least in Malcolm's case one is able to locate her voice and form some idea of who is writing. Brian Dillon, on the other hand, comes away looking like a man with fascinations but no original ideas, nor a real voice of his own.
My other issue with this collection, particularly compared to Essayism, is the perspective. In Essayism, there was clear development of Dillon as a reader and as a writer, and this gave a sense of who was narrating the essays and why. His mode has changed in Suppose a Sentence - the work is necessarily personal given his (stated) interest in collecting sentences for himself. But as the work goes on, I find that he empties himself from his writing. The result is disappointing. If the work is indeed meant to be a personal enterprise, I feel it would work much better by explaining what makes each sentence compelling to HIM. There is an irony operating in his essay on Janet Malcolm - he describes her as fixated on atmosphere, a nebulous "sense" of things being critical to her writing. Well, he's the same way - all through the book we are receiving "senses" that become nebulous due to insufficient textual evidence and lack of well-explained reader response. But at least in Malcolm's case one is able to locate her voice and form some idea of who is writing. Brian Dillon, on the other hand, comes away looking like a man with fascinations but no original ideas, nor a real voice of his own.