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started reading The March last night (the yankees are coming! the yankees are coming!).
doctorow wins, hands down (even over collingwood!), for worst opening sentence in a book, ever ~ this is the portrait of a writer who's beyond considering what his editors or audience think (and clearly his editors let him get away with it). i'd type it up, but the sentence is literally twenty lines long (full of gerunds and clauses, starting out with mattie getting out of bed and ending with aunt pettibone knocking the silver out of her carriage ~ and the journey from one to the other is littered with the little corpses of semi-colons and commas and i don't know what. just horrific.
after recovering from the woggly start, the book actually acts like normal text and seems to be developing an interesting story, but hooo-eee! that opening line should be taken out and shot.
as a side note, i have to add: there was once an article (don't remember who wrote it) about requisites in southern fiction for it to be considered "great" ~ chief among these was "a dead mule". it was to faulkner's credit (and a testament to his "greatness") that he always managed to have one or two (and a whole pack of them in at least one book). doctorow, i imagine (amused) hedging his bets, kills off a couple of mules in the opening chapter. it's a strange scene, frankly, and stood out to me as wholly illogical (the family didn't shoot the cows and they took the horses, so i don't understand the killing of the mules). it wasn't until later that i wondered if maybe doctorow had read that article as well. ha!
~ * ~
i had all evening to write and didn't. more than somewhat depressing.
: o p
i've got homework to do, i've got the website to finish, and i've been invited to some show tonight (which i already don't feel up to at 9 a.m.). i was so productive yesterday. today, i just want to veg.
doctorow wins, hands down (even over collingwood!), for worst opening sentence in a book, ever ~ this is the portrait of a writer who's beyond considering what his editors or audience think (and clearly his editors let him get away with it). i'd type it up, but the sentence is literally twenty lines long (full of gerunds and clauses, starting out with mattie getting out of bed and ending with aunt pettibone knocking the silver out of her carriage ~ and the journey from one to the other is littered with the little corpses of semi-colons and commas and i don't know what. just horrific.
after recovering from the woggly start, the book actually acts like normal text and seems to be developing an interesting story, but hooo-eee! that opening line should be taken out and shot.
as a side note, i have to add: there was once an article (don't remember who wrote it) about requisites in southern fiction for it to be considered "great" ~ chief among these was "a dead mule". it was to faulkner's credit (and a testament to his "greatness") that he always managed to have one or two (and a whole pack of them in at least one book). doctorow, i imagine (amused) hedging his bets, kills off a couple of mules in the opening chapter. it's a strange scene, frankly, and stood out to me as wholly illogical (the family didn't shoot the cows and they took the horses, so i don't understand the killing of the mules). it wasn't until later that i wondered if maybe doctorow had read that article as well. ha!
~ * ~
i had all evening to write and didn't. more than somewhat depressing.
: o p
i've got homework to do, i've got the website to finish, and i've been invited to some show tonight (which i already don't feel up to at 9 a.m.). i was so productive yesterday. today, i just want to veg.
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