Reading style: a life in sentences

209 Pages·2014·0.647 MB·English

by  Davidson, Jenny

Reading S tyle
A Life in Sentences
Jenny Davidson
Reading Style

Reading Style
A Life in Sentences
Jenny Davidson
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2014 Jenny Davidson
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davidson, Jenny.
Reading style : a life in sentences / Jenny Davidson.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16858-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53740-7
(electronic)
1. Readability (Literary style) 2. Style, Literary. 3. Grammar, Comparative
and general—Sentences. 4. Grammar, Comparative and general—Syntax
5. Criticism, Textual. 6. Literature—Study and teaching. I. Title.
PN204.D38 2014
809—dc23 2013030998
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable
acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design by Julia Kushnirsky
Cover illustration by Mara Cerri
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
For my teachers,
my students
and
everyone else
who has ever talked
with me
about books

To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is
alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble.
The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim
to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appro-
priate for getting down something of this particular fu-
gitive sensibility.
—Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp’” (1964)
The most direct probe of the intensity of our ludic read-
ers’ needs to escape from unpleasant consciousness
is Question 3a in the Reading Habits Questionnaire
(scored in chapter 5 as part of the Frustration Index);
namely, how would one feel to discover, alone in a
strange hotel, that one had nothing to read. This ques-
tion elicited a range of replies from the 129 students
readily scored in terms of their affective tone and inten-
sity. These dimensions are even more clearly discerned
in the response of the 28 ludic readers who replied to
this question. In approximate sequence of intensity,
with headings selected on intuitive grounds to describe
the tone of the response, these 28 replies are set out be-
low (if more than one reader made a given response the
number who did so is indicated in parenthesis):
No emotion: nothing
Displeasure: restless (2), frustrated (5), annoyed,
peeved, a bit hassled
Anger: bloody annoyed
Agitated: manic, bothered, a little upset, let down,
disappointed, bad, bitterly disappointed, ter-
rible
Anxiety: lost (2), quite lost, lost and miserable,
really miserable, desolate!, awful/dispossessed,
desperate
—Victor Nell, Lost in a Book: The Psychology of
Reading for Pleasure (1988)

CoNTeNTS
1.
The Glimmer Factor: Anthony Burgess’s 99 Novels 1
2.
Lord Leighton, Liberace and the Advantages of
Bad Writing: Helen DeWitt, Harry Stephen Keeler,
Lionel Shriver, George eliot 11
3.
Mouthy Pleasures and the Problem of Momentum:
Gary Lutz, Lolita, Lydia Davis, Jonathan Lethem 26
4.
The Acoustical elegance of Aphorism: Kafka,
Fielding, Austen, Flaubert 35
5.
Tempo, Repetition and a Taxonomy of Pacing:
Peter Temple, Neil Gaiman, A. L. Kennedy,
edward P. Jones 55
6.
Late Style: The Golden Bowl and Swann’s Way 68
7.
Disordered Sentences: Georges Perec, Roland
Barthes, Wayne Koestenbaum, Luc Sante 96
8.
Details That Linger and the Charm of Voluntary
Reading: George Pelecanos, Stephen King,
Thomas Pynchon 127
ix