Sentences

The hurricane. A Bush-appointed Chief Justice. Carnage in Iraq, rioting in Northern Ireland. Not to mention my own crap. It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks.

I think about things to take my mind off of it. One of the things I like to think about is language…words, phrases, sentences. In the shower last night I put together my Top Five list of sentences remembered from books. The’re not in any order; they aren’t even necessarily my favorite lines, just ones that, for one reason or another, have stuck in my brain. Since they’re not actually ranked, how about I use letters instead of numbers? Seems only right.

Top 5 Sentences Remembered from Books

A. “The Motie was particularly interested in the various forms of human government.” Larry Niven, The Mote in God’s Eye. Pretty dull sentence, right? I’m actually annoyed that it’s in my head and that it pops up every now and then, but I supposed it’s my deserved punishment for lying. In sophomore English class, I told this kid that I had a photographic memory. Which I don’t, I just used to enjoy making stuff like that up. Sometimes if I was talking to someone I knew I’d never see again--on a train, for instance--I’d make up an entire life story, typically much more dramatic or adventurous than my actual one. Sometimes I’d use an English or Irish accent. Anyway, to challenge my supposed photographic memory, this kid asked me to memorize a sentence from the book he was reading. The deal was that he would demand, at some unspecified point in the future, that I recall it, and though I may not have a photographic memory, I do have a brain that weird shit gets stuck in. So, not only did I recall the sentence when he asked me to, I still remember it lo these many years later. Considering that it’s using up valuable cranial real estate, I think the joke was ultimately on me.

B. “Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes, or midway leave us whelmed.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick. Okay, technically that’s two sentences. I guess Melville didn’t have an English teacher who told him that it’s “wrong” to begin a sentence with a conjunction. Anyway, this one I purposely committed to memory. Even though I tend to dismiss Moby Dick as 20 pages of an actual story coupled with 600 pages of a textbook for Cetacean Biology 101, Melville does knock out some killer stuff now and again. He shares my affinity for alliteration and taste for the poetic where the prosaic would get the job done as well (would you rather sail to the Solomon Islands or the Islands of King Solomon? For me the choice is clear). This particular passage struck me hard enough when I read it that I felt I should memorize it. It does sum up rather well the way I (unfortunately) tend to view life.

C. “The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” James Joyce, Ulysses. Okay, technically that’s not even one sentence, since it lacks a predicate. Actually, seeing it out of context, you might think that “hung” is a verb, but it’s actually functioning as an adjective here. This bit comes toward the end of the book, when the omniscient narrator is asking questions and then answering them. As Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step out of Leopold’s house into the Dublin night, the narrator asks, “What did they see?” and the answer is the phrase above. I had made my way through almost the entire novel, and become convinced along the way that Joyce had lost his considerable gifts for lyricism and grace, when I read that line, and it literally took the breath from my lungs. Knowing that Joyce could still write like that and was deliberately not doing so kind of sucked, but reading that one line made having read the other 900 pages worth it.

D. “Mr. Rainbird Clarke conjectures Pictish.” Hee. Though I can’t remember for the life of me who wrote it, this is my favorite sentence ever from a nonfiction book. I was taking a class called History of English, and was doing research on a paper about the influence of Celtic languages on early English, when I came across it in some musty tome. The author was discussing a stone that had been found in Scotland with an inscription in an unknown language, and what that language might be. “Rainbird,” “conjecture,” and “Pictish” are all awesome words, and I’d never seen them together before and probably never will again. It’s also perfect trochaic pentameter. Awesome.

E. “Strange young girls, dark as the moon, stared from mysterious verdant doorways.” Jack Kerouac, On the Road. This actually is one of my favorite lines, maybe my most favorite line, from a book. It’s so good that I won’t even say anything about it. I’ll just let you do with it what you will.