In this age of information, where words—sometimes not even words, but the outline of a word—serve as conveyor belts of facts and advertisements, where is the sentence that fills the brain with hyperbolic joy? Something that breaks up the crushing barrage of workhorse prose? A sentence that veers from the traditional, overly familiar subject-verb linear line to rejigger the world so we see anew?
For a long time, I’ve been an admirer of sentences that transported me, illuminated a dimension of existence that I sensed, but didn’t quite believe was true until I read it. As I grew older, my awe continued and I began to take them apart to understand them and find their magic. Gold all over my fingers, I swear.
One of my favorite classes to teach is Style in Fiction because we get to swim around in one extraordinary sentence for an inordinate amount of time; because we deconstruct sentences and study their inner workings; because we can use the same architecture to create our own sentences; because the day is so much better when you hear a beautiful sentence singing in your ear.
In this column, once a week, I’ll pluck a stunning sentence from a published work and show you how it charms, beautifies, renews, and refashions the world, so you make your own stellar sentences.
Very excited to receive these emails with beautiful sentences Nina! xo J
I always want more