Monthly Literature Challenge

[TSherbs]

from one of my favorites of his stories....

 

[essayfaire]

16 hours ago, InesF said:

Yes, prepare for March! 👀  

So glad February is a short month!

[InesF]

18 hours ago, TSherbs said:

from one of my favorites of his stories....

Oh, yes! 😊

I read this novel so many years ago, I didn't remember for the Challenge.

Thank you for participating in the CRV in such a nice way! I like that you wrote the last chapter! 🤭

[InesF]

7 hours ago, essayfaire said:

So glad February is a short month!

24 times to sleep until ... oh wait ... 🤫 .... would you like to create a writevent series?

[essayfaire]

9 hours ago, InesF said:

24 times to sleep until ... oh wait ... 🤫 .... would you like to create a writevent series?

Oooh- I'm intrigued.  What would we do?

[InesF]

On 2/4/2023 at 6:43 PM, essayfaire said:

Oooh- I'm intrigued.  What would we do?

We can go CRV:

 

22 times to sleep ...

 

I guess it is still easy to find the source.

Some 25 years ago, I used this citation, translated to german, as the Introduction to a self created pen-and-paper roleplaying game. The game content was a complex riddle, like a labyrinth built from both, true and false information.

However, Poe's use of the English language in these long sentences is a complex riddle in itself - it doesn't read fluently for me. 🤭

[TSherbs]

? I don't understand.

[essayfaire]

16 hours ago, InesF said:

- it doesn't read fluently for me. 🤭

He might have been thinking in French...

 

I'm still not quite sure how the writevent would work. I don't do the longest novel/sentence thread, but I don't believe that's what you are imagining.  I think I'm being dense.

[InesF]

16 hours ago, TSherbs said:

? I don't understand.

The image and the writing is only the answer to a question asked before. It isn't a new question.

 

6 hours ago, essayfaire said:

He might have been thinking in French...

Hmm, that is a possibility. 🤫

At first, I thought it is me, not a native English speaker, not understanding the "highest heights" of novel writing. But the more often I read the book chapter the more confused I am.

 

7 hours ago, essayfaire said:

I'm still not quite sure how the writevent would work.

Don't worry, me too, no clue about how to fill the time until March ... 😄 It wasn't intentionally the longest-sentence competition. It was more like: "let's kill time!"

 

(and, to be honest, looking forward to March: I don't like to change my February set of inks and pens. I hope, this may change towards end of February. Otherwise ... puh! ... 🤔 🙄)

[TSherbs]

13 hours ago, essayfaire said:

He might have been thinking in French...

 

I couldn't tell if you meant this seriously or not, and I had never thought about this in terms of Poe's language before. Interestingly, Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, also set in France, is perhaps his novel with the most challenging of his stylistic use of English. 

 

But both authors were much more rooted in their knowledge of Latin and Latinate phrasing and vocabulary. Both authors knew French well (Dickens lived in France periodically; Poe never visited France). 

 

In this passage quoted by InesF, Poe's narrator is trying to impress the audience (Poe was always himself trying to impress his readers), and he is trying to convey the detective's (Dupin's) expertise in what Poe calls "ratiocination": the power of the mind to reason through facts to a logical conclusion. In the elevated Victorian (British) style of the day that Poe admired and emulated, this meant the use of much subordination in the syntax of longer sentences built with many abstract Latinate nouns (many of which came to English through the French, but that is a different matter). 

[inkstainedruth]

4 hours ago, TSherbs said:

Interestingly, Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, also set in France, is perhaps his novel with the most challenging of his stylistic use of English. 

That is interesting -- especially since that's the one I found most readable of any of his novels, possibly because of the plot. 

The problem I have with Dickens in general is that you almost never know *which* Dickens is going to shop up in any given chapter -- the snarky political journalist shining a spotlight on corruption (such as in large parts of Little Dorrit and Bleak House), or the treacly sentimentalist (of which a good chunk of The Old Curiosity Shop is a prime example...).  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[TSherbs]

1 hour ago, inkstainedruth said:

That is interesting -- especially since that's the one I found most readable of any of his novels, possibly because of the plot. 

 

You must have already known the outline of the plot, then. The plot of Two Cities is dense and nearly inscrutable for several chapters as it jumps among character groups. Here is a paragraph from chapter three: 

Quote

Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing and repassing between France and England, on secret business of which he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner’s schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty’s Chief Secretary of State and most honourable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them. That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the prisoner’s friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to public benefactors, this shining citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he probably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well knew the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues; whereat the jury’s countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that they knew nothing about the passages), was in a manner contagious; more especially the bright virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That, the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily was an honour, had communicated itself to the prisoner’s servant, and had engendered in him a holy determination to examine his master’s table-drawers and pockets, and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable servant; but that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) brothers and sisters, and honoured him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that would be produced, would show the prisoner to have been furnished with lists of his Majesty’s forces, and of their disposition and preparation, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed such information to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner’s handwriting; but that it was all the same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as they knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner’s head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone.

Haha! What?

 

Now, from the opening page of Hard Times (a decidedly different novel, for sure):

Quote

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve.  The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall.  The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set.  The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial.  The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside.  The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.

 

I will say this: the plot conclusion to Two Cities is one of the best that I have ever read. Wow! And it really helps NOT to know what is going to happen. You just have to slog through a lot of dense metaphor and allegory to get there....

[inkstainedruth]

13 minutes ago, TSherbs said:

You must have already known the outline of the plot, then.

True.  I've seen a couple of film versions of it, probably at least one before reading it.  And I suppose i could also have read a condensed version of it as well.

Have not read Hard Times -- got sufficiently put off by The Old Curiosity Shop.  Which as a disappointment, because I had read an excerpt in one of the Bookhouse series volumes (the part where Nell is traveling with Mrs. Jarley and her waxworks exhibit) as a kid.  And when I finally read the entire book as an adult?  Yuck....  Completely depressing and full of unpleasant characters (not the least of which being Nell's brother...).

For those not familiar with it, Bookhouse was a series of volumes that are sort of graded by complexity (we had the 6 volume set growing up, but I've also seen a 12 volume set, where I guess even volume of the 6 volume set is broken into 2): volume 1 is nursery rhymes; volume 6 has biographies.  I could not believe the prices I've seen in used bookstores for individual books from the 6 volume set, and felt LUCKY to ONLY pay $25 for volume 1 -- which may not be the same edition/printing as ours; my mom had lent our copy to my brother and (now ex-) sister-in-law when my niece was little, and my s-i-l THREW IT AWAY instead of returning it.... My mother was, to say the least, unpleased.  Me?  I was livid....  And even more so when I saw the prices in used bookstores.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[TSherbs]

Interesting. Never heard of Bookhouse. 

[InesF]

Thank you @TSherbs and @inkstainedruth for your enlightening comments!

[TSherbs]

I suppose, on this thread I should have copied those paragraphs by hand....but no way! 🤪

[inkstainedruth]

I don't blame you in the case of the Dickens quote....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[TSherbs]

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

I don't blame you in the case of the Dickens quote....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

The Two Cities paragraph, though, would be an interesting study in parallelism: I count something like 30 repetitions of "that" as a conjunction (introducing noun clauses, I believe). 

[essayfaire]

On 2/8/2023 at 10:18 AM, TSherbs said:

couldn't tell if you meant this seriously or not, and I had never thought about this in terms of Poe's language before

Though I have been known to make snarky asides, I was actually being serious here- French prose can have a certain rhythm that differs from that of English.  I never thought Dickens sounded French at all!  Some people's brains work differently than others.

 

I just noticed- the new strikethrough font seems to have disappeared....

[essayfaire]

It's a new month; I was tardy last month so made sure to come check right now.  Oh, @InesF your adoring fans await!