Freedom is a very fine read.

I haven't read Freedom yet and so haven't said anything. I did like the Corrections, though. I probably would have liked it better if critics hadn't talked about it as the most important innovation in fiction since Jane Austen invented the within the fourth wall, human omniscient narrator.

Faulkner, I'm afraid, made the run-on sentence allowable in third person narrative as long as it means to mime the rush of thought just as Joyce and Woolf had already used it in free indirect narrative to capture stream of consciousness.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:.

Faulkner, I'm afraid, made the run-on sentence allowable in third person narrative as long as it means to mime the rush of thought just as Joyce and Woolf had already used it in free indirect narrative to capture stream of consciousness.
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Next time someone criticizes my tendency to be overly precise in analysis and explanation and to overburden my sentences (but always with proper grammar) in an effort to lead the reader through an analysis and complete the point before the reader pauses, I will just explain I am carrying on the literary tradition of three of the masters of the (English) written word.

Great literary tradition just isn't appreciated in federal tax law advocacy, I guess.
 
originally posted by maureen:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:.

Faulkner, I'm afraid, made the run-on sentence allowable in third person narrative as long as it means to mime the rush of thought just as Joyce and Woolf had already used it in free indirect narrative to capture stream of consciousness.
Click to expand...

Next time someone criticizes my tendency to be overly precise in analysis and explanation and to overburden my sentences (but always with proper grammar) in an effort to lead the reader through an analysis and complete the point before the reader pauses, I will just explain I am carrying on the literary tradition of three of the masters of the (English) written word.

Great literary tradition just isn't appreciated in federal tax law advocacy, I guess.
Click to expand...

Ah, but in legal writing, unlike in the literary tradition, you must always name the subject, never leaving it implied. I had a boss once who was a lawyer by training; whenever he asked me to write memos he would always transform any instance of, say, "Joe said he would do this and then he did that" into "Joe said Joe would do this and then Joe did that." Talk of overly precise. Made me bilious. I imagine federal tax law advocacy is the same, no?
 
The criteria in lit. are different. You can write grammatically perfect and perfectly communicative sentences that would evoke no literary interest. Think of the difference between a good police sketch and Picasso. I wouldn't want Picasso drawing police sketches either--although the concept does have its interests.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I wouldn't want Picasso drawing police sketches either--although the concept does have its interests.
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Seeing the perp from several angles at once could have its uses.
 
Interesting - my copy of The Corrections had publishing errors - can't remember what - repeated pages I think.

And Oswaldo there's no reason in legal advocacy why your sentence wasn't perfectly fine and your boss's turgid.

Jonathan, I assure you - my drafting is closer to the police sketch but with tempo and precision!
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The criteria in lit. are different. You can write grammatically perfect and perfectly communicative sentences that would evoke no literary interest. Think of the difference between a good police sketch and Picasso. I wouldn't want Picasso drawing police sketches either--although the concept does have its interests.
Click to expand...

At the extreme, you'd have to do away with poetry altogether.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The criteria in lit. are different. You can write grammatically perfect and perfectly communicative sentences that would evoke no literary interest. Think of the difference between a good police sketch and Picasso. I wouldn't want Picasso drawing police sketches either--although the concept does have its interests.
Click to expand...

At the extreme, you'd have to do away with poetry altogether.
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Clarify. Are you saying that poetry is never written in grammatically correct sentences?
 
Nope; I was trying to score a pithy short quip of limited validity, rather than covering all the bases. Knew you'd smoke me out, too :)
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The criteria in lit. are different. You can write grammatically perfect and perfectly communicative sentences that would evoke no literary interest. Think of the difference between a good police sketch and Picasso. I wouldn't want Picasso drawing police sketches either--although the concept does have its interests.
Click to expand...

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