I fucking love sentences

An ugly sentence to inaugurate an elegy

I simply adore this sentence which I recently encountered on an informational plaque at the Harlem Jazz Museum. Let’s breathe it in:

“In most Harlem apartments, the living room was where the entire family gathered and where guests were entertained.”

I am laying on my bed like a schoolgirl in the 1990s, kicking my feet and winding the telephone cord around my finger as I gaze at it. I’m blushing. I’m giggling.

Perhaps I oversell it. The real zing to this sour-punch delight of a sentence is contained almost entirely in the semantic content of the first clause. “[T]he living room was where the entire family gathered and where guests were entertained” contains quite a few words, but their exact sequence isn’t so important.

But those first four words!

“In most Harlem apartments…”

So in some Harlem apartments, the living room was used for something else. But what was it? What is the secret purpose of this minority of Harlem living rooms? Doing one’s toilet? Woodworking? Group sex?

“In most Harlem apartments…”

But this uneven bifurcation of purpose applies only to Harlem apartments. What apartments does it not apply to? Apartments that are in New York, but not in Harlem? Apartments everywhere outside of Harlem? And in what way is this bifurcation different? If I visit an apartment in the Bronx, or Wyoming, or Uzbekistan, what should I expect to find in the living room? Will the family be gathering, or entertaining guests, with certainty—such that it is not longer mostly—or with even less likelihood than in a Harlem apartment? What will they be doing in there?

“In most Harlem apartments…”

The mystery deepens. So I can make this assumption about the living room’s purpose for most of the apartments in Harlem—I can conclude nothing at all about the other types of Harlem domiciles. Detached single homes, townhouses (they have those in Harlem, I assure you)—their living rooms could contain anything at all.

Or—perhaps they do not even have a living room, at all. Had I considered that? What do these domestic places have, then, if not living rooms? Drawing rooms, foyers, sitting rooms? Just a winding hallway leading to each bedroom? An extra bathroom? Something else?

In four short words, the Harlem Jazz Museum has opened my eyes and imagination to a whole universe of whimsy and joy.

I, poor scribbler, cannot help but worshipfully imitate:

“In most Toyota SUVs, the steering wheel is what changes the direction of the car, and where the driver puts his hands.”

Good lord but I hate Substackisms

Here is a quote from a recent article of mine:

It isn’t that I never enjoyed meals. Food definitely tasted good to me; meals could be enjoyable.

I don’t like it almost at all, but it’s at least a slight improvement from the original phrase I wrote here, which read:

It’s not that I never enjoyed meals.

This makes me barf. I really wrote that. It’s what I’ve started to think of as a Substackism. Substackisms are a step above AI slop, but they have the same character of rigid repetition. Perhaps they’re an inevitability—everyone on here reads each other, picks up quirks from each other. It’s not deliberate, it’s an emergent house style.

Eugh.

Once you notice it, you see it everywhere. I saw it again on this post about quitting alcohol:

It’s not that I missed alcohol.

Why does this bother me so much? Why does it evoke, of all things, cringe? It’s like the opposite of the pain of prediction error. Each word falling in the exact expected sequence so readily.

You start to really long for a sentence made of words that nobody has ever put together before.

Here are some sentences from this entry in a series reviewing all the bathrooms at Lighthaven, a local event venue:

Finally, we come to the attic bathroom; the worst of the bunch. I have not deemed the last two bathrooms worthy of names, but for its decrepit, petty wickedness I christen it Yubaba.

Yubaba has no windows and is lit only by the harsh light of a single corn cob bulb inelegantly screwed into a downlight flushing. […]

[U]pon endeavoring to take a bath in this crooked space, the author was dismayed to discover that none of the bathtubs at Lighthaven have plugs and therefore cannot fulfill their telos. I had to plug the drain with the heel of my foot. Fortunately, I was blessed with hot water flow so plentiful it counteracted the entropy inherent to the imperfect interfacing of man and tub.

Are these sentences without fault? Certainly no. But each one took me by the lapels and yanked me into a brave new world. At no point did I know which word was coming next until I read it.

Let’s look at another sentence from that same passage:

As I sat in that water, simultaneously cooling and draining away, my mind turned inward.

I misunderstood it when I first read it, because it contains a grammatical error. The author probably meant that the water was simultaneously cooling and draining away. But the actual construction indicates that the author himself is cooling and draining away as his mind turns inward. What an image! Far more enchanting than anything enabled by dull drab correctness, words hemming in meaning like stifling hedges.

Considering the blog

But this is all amateur hour. You know who wasn’t an amateur? David Foster Wallace. Consider this sentence:

Actually, it might extend all the way up to Bucksport, but we were never able to get farther north than Belfast on Route 1, whose summer traffic is, as you can imagine, unimaginable.

As you can imagine, unimaginable. I pulled this one out because it’s on the first page of this essay, but the whole thing is good sentences. I’ve never read any DFW novels. I think of reading Infinite Jest. A thousand pages of such sentences. It makes the head spin.

Some say that writing is meant to evoke strong emotion. This rewriting of “Consider the Lobster” in the style of a Substack post evokes in me profound despair. I think it’s supposed to.

Really, what is it we’re doing here? Squawking?

Squawking is important. It’s a fundamental human need. Hear me. Acknowledge me. Attend to me. I’ll attend to you too. A squawk doesn’t need to be beautiful. It just needs to be emitted, and received. But I want to make beautiful things. I want them to last.

I wish I had more to offer. Penniless beggar that I am, pockets turned out, supplicating. Hear me. Attend to me. I’m sorry I couldn’t make better sentences. I’m sorry that all I can do is squawk. I hope someday I’ll do better. That we’ll all do better, together.