The News of the Sentence
“Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car,” by John Updike
The nave was dimly lit, the congregation small, the sermon short, and the wind howled a nihilistic counterpoint beyond the black windows blotted with garbled apostles; the empty pews, making the minister seem remote and small and emblematic, intensified our sensation of huddling.
“Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car,” by John Updike
Updike is an adjectival writer, growing his sentences primarily through adjectival information. When I read his work, I’m often inspired to revise and add more adjectives to make a finer point.
There are so many adjectives in this sentence! Dimly lit, small, short, nihilistic, black, garbled, empty, remote, on and on. Virginia Tufte, in her book Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, writes, “Often the noun and the verb simply state the known or given information, and it is the adjective or adverb that carries the news of the sentence.”
In this short story, the narrator’s opinion of the church slips in primarily through adjectives: He hears the wind howling a nihilistic counterpoint, and the apostles are garbled. Here is the news: he is not rejoicing in church but huddling, and the minister and presumably his message are not reaching the narrator. The narrator’s response seems to be a mix of pleasure and dislike.
The sentence opens with a subject and the linking verb, “was,” followed by a subject complement, “dimly lit.” A subject complement appears after a linking verb and describes the sentence’s subject. In Updike’s sentence, he uses adjectives as complements to flesh out the subjects.
To change the rhythm of the next two clauses, Updike invokes the technique of ellipsis, eliminating “was,” and comma splices for more compression. If he hadn’t used these techniques, it would have read like this: “The nave was dimly lit, and the congregation was small, and the sermon was short.”
After these short clauses, he changes the rhythm again, using a longer one: “and the wind howled a nihilistic counterpoint beyond the black windows blotted with garbled apostles.” Personification animates the wind, adding a contrast to what is going on inside the church. Do you hear the alliteration? Beyond/black/blotted and the echo of the “b” in “garbled.”
Then comes a semicolon, and what follows is a mid-branching sentence, which creates delay and suspense. The subject “the empty pews” is separated from the verb “intensified.” What separates the two is modifying information, telling us more about the empty pews and their effect on the narrator. Polysyndeton, the overuse of conjunctions, helps create a sense of distance between the narrator and the minister: “making the minister seem remote and small and emblematic.”
Your Turn
Open with your subject and use a linking verb. Add a subject complement and use an adjective to describe your subject.
Add a comma and use two more of these types of clauses, a subject with a subject complement via an adjective. Eliminate the “was” and the “and” to connect these.
Add a third clause that is longer than the other two. Can you use personification and animate the inanimate? Alliteration?
Use a semicolon. Now comes the mid-branching sentence. Start with your subject and add modifying information before you come to your verb. Is there room for polysyndeton?
How did it go?
What else do you see?
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About Me:
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007.
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This is so much fun, and I find myself using a different type of language than usual to try to fulfill the construction requirements. How interesting!
The path beside the canal was narrow, the footing uneven, the walkers few, and bushes on the side away from the water extended dew-wet branches to dry themselves on the clothes of passers-by; The tea-colored water in a sleepy swirl conveyed pollen and leaves and bits of trash alongside, losing ground as the strollers shifted gear.
"The test instructions were crisp but rote, the pencils sharp, the eyes forward, and the applicants surveyed their parade grounds of empty ovals – A, B, C, D, E – like terrified generals; the three-hour skirmish, foretelling the disaster of the spring campaign by 9:15, would devastate families and decimate the infantry and pop penciled ovals over the battlefield like hand-grenades."