Excerpts
One perfect paragraph (from a book with plenty to spare)
Upriver, dawn’s dry herald brought to the hungover steamship crew news of the pervert Evavangeline had gutted the midnight before. It went bunk to bunk in whispers and giggles. Instead of falling into the water like decent folk, the pervert had gotten tangled in a fishnet hung along the ship’s port side. Throughout the night a pulsing contingent of catfish, carp, grinnel, gar, sucker, alligators and even a few river-lost sand sharks disoriented by fresh water had followed the boat, swirling in the ooze. In the morning light, enormous orange crawfish with their pinchers clicking rode the body, one arm of which trailing in the water was festooned with moccasins attached at the fang. When one became too blooded it fell loose and sank in the clouds in the sky in the river.
– Tom Franklin, Smonk
Tags: Smonk, Tom Franklin
Steven,
you’re anal as the soap they make to clean soap; you’re reading of that paragraph is reductive and insane, but you’re also mean. rock on.
Haven’t read this. Will add it to my list. You guys read his collection Poachers? Really great stuff in there.
If it was bolded in the book it wasn’t perfect.
Evavangeline is a cool name.
Hell at the Breech is also very good. But I’m surprised to see Justin Taylor touting Tom Franklin. I’m not certain why though. It just feels odd. Are you being mean, Justin?
I don’t understand your question, Brad. I just discovered the book, and it’s incredible–filthy and hilarious and fun. What’s the problem?
Poachers is a badass story.
No problem. I was worried you were being sarcastic and I just couldn’t tell.
Not even Mean Week’s enough to stop E.O. Smonk–unless he was going to be its mascot. Except he’d shoot anyone dead who was trying to make a mascot of him. Etc. etc.
Tom Franklin is a bad-ass writer, and actually a very sweet dude too. His new book, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, seems to be getting a nice little buzz.
What an awful fucking paragraph — and this is not sarcasm.
“Instead of falling into the water like decent folk”
decent folk is plural, the pervert is singular. Can the author not count?
Also the beginning, the dry herald of dawn bringing news from bunk to bunk is a lazy and confusing metaphor that when reflected upon becomes nonsense — can each of these sailors, on waking, see the pervert from their bunks?, and “it” is what the news giggling, the dry herald of dawn giggling? The sailors giggling? Logically it must be the sailors (they giggle, what, like school girls?) but grammatically it is dawn’s dry herald(and I strongly suspect the authored believes he is talking about the news giggling) And before someone tries to school me with some Greek nonsense like Hypallage — just because some scholar somewhere came up with a fancy word for something that’s been used since art began doesn’t mean it was used well, or even intentionally. For all the potential in that paragraph using transferred epithet on morning sobriety was such an uninspired waste.
Of course it would be an htmlgiant contributor to claim the perfect paragraph contains a list, cheesy douche.
The near end of the paragraph is also a disaster:
“…one arm of which trailing in the water was festooned with moccasins attached at the fang.”
Moccasins attached at the fang? You can’t see it, but I am shaking my head in sadness. -_-
The ending is actually pretty cool.
You know, as much as some of what you’re saying is true, I still think this paragraph is totally out for blood.
You know what, fuck it. I had a reply to you, but this is a waste of my time. If you’re too stupid to parse the prose then go read something else.
Overwritten, florid, purple prose. But then again, that’s what most of you (contributors to HTML) write, so I guess it makes sense that you would think this is an example of good writing when it is nothing more than the literary equivalent of a cotton candy. I pity the person who wants to read three hundred plus pages of this. You might as well stare at a piece of op-art for 24 hours straight. Suckers.
“”Instead of falling into the water like decent folk”
decent folk is plural, the pervert is singular. Can the author not count? ”
The phrase carries an implication, “Instead of falling into the water like decent folk [would fall into the water.]” Decent folk would fall into the water, but the pervert didn’t/wouldn’t fall into the water. I think it’s sound?
mean week is my excuse for being a nitpicky douche right now. also my excuse if I’m wrong: “It’s mean week, I was just trying to be an asshole.”
It would take you 24 hours to read three hundred pages of this? Mean week!
This Ahron Applefield has one hell of a cool name.
You are correct about it properly being wont not want. Thanks.
As for my supposed inability to read, not sure where that is coming from beyond you looking to lash out. If you really thought this paragraph was perfect then you’ve got shit taste, so I can’t take your opinion too seriously.
Steven,
you’re anal as the soap they make to clean soap; you’re reading of that paragraph is reductive and insane, but you’re also mean. rock on.
good call
I like how you add the qualifier “Mean week” at the end of your shot. I’ve done the same this week at least once.
I think it’s bad, and good.
It’s tough to be mean.
Sutree wold kick E.O Smonk’s ass, we can agree here, right?
I can certainly be mean but I’m honest and not a pretentious fuck. There is plenty of shit flying around and plenty of writers who participate in the shit flinging, but lamenting their inability to actually be responsible and actually do some fucking work is as productive as voting in America.
Hey Justin, at least come back with a better insult than calling me an idiot. Child.
Here’s my thing: I love to parse prose when it’s rewarding to do so; when out of the complexity and the word play and the depth comes some higher meaning or form of expression that a few lines of straightforward prose never could have captured so completely. DFW and, yes, Faulkner come to mind. Justin, some of your work, like ‘Amber at the window in hurricane season,’ does too.
Here, though, I don’t feel like there’s anything buried in this paragraph other than a very simple, if vividly imagined, vignette that Franklin is trying desperately to make feel like it’s something more. And that, to my mind, is just frustrating.
“but lamenting their inability to actually be responsible and actually do some fucking work is as productive as voting in America.”
You’re on the wrong post. The writer-lazy post was earlier.
This is the “this paragraph glows” post.
bad read, bro
“Overwritten, florid, purple prose” is overwritten, florid, purple prose.. your comment is boring, man!
It took me a couple reads (which is good), but I really like this. A lot. Thanks for posting, Justin.
I am not sure about it being the greatest paragraph ever, but “folk” in folksy language is often used as a plural. Sort of like saying “he’s great people”.
“moccasins attached at the fang” is actually the part I don’t like because it seems contrived. Well, the whole thing seems contrived. But the truth is I don’t think a book or writer can be judged by a paragraph. It is what happens when all the paragraphs are put together, the book is over, and you set it down. What happens then? I think that is the important part…
I should’ve stopped reading your post after your claim that “folk” can’t be used in the plural. Seriously? It certainly is used as a plural in various vernaculars (e.g., Southern), esp. when part of a simile. As BC notes, the language here is clearly inflected with a “folksy” vernacular.
You seem bitter like a lot of unpublished folk. I feel like your post could have appeared on LROD.
“[M]occasins” are water moccasins, eh? New-world vipers trailing from, yes, two forefangs each – “festooned” – , which ‘hooks’, after the snakes strike, would – for some period – be where and how the serpents are “attached”.
Really? I usually don’t see this kind of prose from the HTMLGiant crowd. Most of the “experimental” stuff I read today employs a minimalist, almost cinematic style and is focused on experimenting with concept and form, rather than playing with sentences, sentence structure, and vernacular. Not what I think of when I think, “purple prose.”
Sut aint a brawler. Abner, probably.
*I should’ve stopped reading your post after your claim that “folk” can’t be used in the plural when referring to a singular antecedent. I’m from the South and people use “folk” this way all the damn time.
Overwritten, florid, purple prose.
From then on until he had you completely subjugated he was always in or out of your room, ubiquitous and garrulous, though his manner gradually moved northward as his raiment improved, until at last when he had bled you until you began to learn better he was calling you Quentin or whatever, and when you saw him next he’d be wearing a cast-off Brooks suit and a hat with a Princeton club I forget which band that someone had given him and which he was pleasantly and unshakably convinced was a part of Abe Lincoln’s military sash.
–that stupidly, fruitlessly ambitious Falkner feller – oh: “Faulkner”
Faulkner=good folk/people.
Here’s my thing: I love to parse prose when it’s rewarding to do so; when out of the complexity and the word play and the depth comes some higher meaning or form of expression that a few lines of straightforward prose never could have captured so completely. DFW and, yes, Faulkner come to mind. Justin, some of your work, like ‘Amber at the window in hurricane season,’ does too.
Here, though, I don’t feel like there’s anything buried in this paragraph other than a very simple, if vividly imagined, vignette that Franklin is trying desperately to make feel like it’s something more. And that, to my mind, is just frustrating.
there is no perfect anything there is just everything and you
I wonder if the Southern vernacular turns off some people? I read a lot of Southern fiction that makes use of vernacular and dialect, and there’s not much in the style here that surprises me (in a bad way): inverted syntax, idiom, the mixture of low and high diction, etc. Pretty standard fare stuff if you read people like Powell, Hannah, Nordan, and Richard (to name a few).
It’s always interesting to me how reviled this kind of “folksy,” Southern style can be, even amongst crowds who fancy themselves “experimental.” I wonder how much of it can be attributed to regional or even class snobbery.
Why are the moccasins attached to a dead body? And how would one of them become too “blooded?” They don’t suck blood like vampires or leeches. They’re snakes, right? Snakes swallow small prey whole, and strike larger threats defensively. I’m confused. Is this set in some alternate world where water-snakes primarily subsist on corpse-blood? If so, I’m totally reading the shit out of it.
It makes no difference whether folk is singular or plural; the comparison is between two manners of falling.
Brian,
*Please use standard punctuation.
*I’m not sure “grotesquely” makes any sense in the context you’re using it (i.e. “grotesquely cliquish”).
*Gasbaggy is not a word, but I like it. Check with Pine on whether or not you’re allowed to employ this kind of linguistic playfulness in your own prose.
*The voice is folksy, so what’s wrong with a little awkwardness? Are you able to read for context and realize that a 3rd person voice can be inflected with vernacular?
Nobody reads Steven Pine.
GD moron.
think there are plenty of reasons to dislike this prose other than being “an idiot,” “too lazy to parse,” or “unpublished.” think some of the responses to steven pine represent grotesquely cliquish defenses of personal brands. think the ad hominem arguments against pine could mask the dawning horror of realizing that this prose is kind of gasbaggy and awkward. think having a ‘mean week’ on the internet is like having a ‘fat week’ at mcdonalds. think.
It makes no difference whether folk is singular or plural; the comparison is between two manners of falling.
Brian,
*Please use standard punctuation.
*I’m not sure “grotesquely” makes any sense in the context you’re using it (i.e. “grotesquely cliquish”).
*Gasbaggy is not a word, but I like it. Check with Pine on whether or not you’re allowed to employ this kind of linguistic playfulness in your own prose.
*The voice is folksy, so what’s wrong with a little awkwardness? Are you able to read for context and realize that a 3rd person voice can be inflected with vernacular?
As long as it is mean week: crawfish riding anything, let alone a body, is highly uncharacteristic.
“It went bunk to bunk in whispers and giggles.”
It [the “news” of the previous paragraph] went [traveled] bunk to bunk[, communicated in the media of] whispers and giggles.
I don’t know about the paragraph, over all. There were some nice juicy bits, some great muscular phrases that seemed to promise a gut-punch of a chunk, but ultimately it left me… not quite cold, okay, but lukewarm. (Mixed metaphors!) Anyway, that said, your reading seems to be dripping in shit.
Still. Entertaining for it.
Not a perfect paragraph.
Even in the awkward initial construction of the sun bringing to the crew the news, dry has no place except for as a rhythmic marker. Ditto the mid in midnight, unless there’s some special significance to midnight in this context. Contingent should be plural. Ooze is just a ham-fisted attempt to either avoid repeating water (and makes no sense… even muddy or bloodied water doesn’t ooze), or there’s a severe overestimation of the amount of viscera a body produces.
Just a few thoughts.
Though perhaps perfect in this post just meant “I like this.” De gustibus, etc. And I’ve just wasted five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Why do so many of you LITERARY TYPES have a hard time understanding idiom and its use in fiction? Seriously, WTF is wrong with you all?
Of course the sun can’t literally bring news–IT’S FUCKING IDIOM.
just pretend my nonstandard punctuation is “folksy” and you will like it
Well, I don’t have to “pretend” when reading the cited passage from Franklin. It’s pretty clear to anyone who is well-read what’s he’s doing with the standard Southern Goth, folksy, vernacular-inflected voice. However, if you’re not well-read you might miss what he’s up to, so touche.
the quality of franklin’s prose is a matter of taste. my point is that it’s shabby and lazy to dismiss dissenting opinions with elitist labels like the aforementioned ones, with which “not well-read” is of a piece.
Interesting, considering the original post that set this whole thing off (the first response that totally dismissed the excerpt).
And it’s not “elitist” to point out the blatant misreading of a writer’s intent and how its in conversation with a particular tradition that is obviously unfamiliar to many of you (for example, interpreting idiom literally).
It’s no longer a “matter of taste” when someone argues that “folk” shouldn’t be used as part of a simile in this passage, or that the “sun can’t bring news.” If it were a mere matter of taste, one could easily argue against these constructions without misreading their intent.
I don’t like the sackcloth-and-ashes prose of Raymond Carver, but I understand what he’s doing.
other posters made those claims. I said that I found the prose ‘gasbaggy and awkward,’ an argument to taste. those who disagree are welcome to do so without censure from me. but your insistence that the only possible reason for disliking franklin’s prose is a lack of education is definitively elitist, not to mention juvenile, myopic, and indicative of a deep-seated insecurity in your own taste. ‘you just don’t get it’ is the kind of low-caliber argument favored by teenagers defending the Insane Clown Posse; people who purport to be writers should be able to do better.
All this talk of “elitism” makes me wonder if I’m arguing with a member of the Tea Party.
all this talk of ‘the author’s intent’ makes me wonder if I’m arguing with someone who’s never heard of intentional fallacy, despite being unimpeachably well-read.
this impeccably reasonable comment by Andrew Tolve is a bizarre place to raise the specters of regional & class snobbery. think you are mistaking criticism of one particular expression of a style for criticism of the style in general.
And this post proves that you don’t know the definition of idiom, which partly operates off intentional fallacy.
It’s not “bizarre” at all when I clearly use his post to interject a new and potentially related question; that’s what people often do in a discussion. I assumed that prefacing my point with, “I wonder,” would make this clear and make my point a bit open-ending, but apparently not.
Considering the fact that I often write and publish fiction that makes use of idiom and Southern vernacular, I think I’m qualified to raise this question, one that many Southern writers are familiar with and deal with when their work is read (or misread) by some non-Southerners.
You’re really grasping for straws now…
“think you are mistaking criticism of one particular expression of a style for criticism of the style in general.”
_____________
The criticism of the expression in Franklin completely disregarded its actual expression; that’s the point, dude. No one ever said, “this use of idiom doesn’t work.”
Jesus Christ.
*open-ended
id·i·om (d-m)
n.
1. A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on.
bullshit. “this use of idiom doesn’t work” is exactly what Andrew Tolve implied, and you came close to calling him a bigot for it.
it’s an interesting question to discuss, but nothing in Tolve’s post suggests that he is prejudiced against the use of idiom and Southern vernacular in general. if you claim you were merely trying to start a new discussion, and not to undermine his opinion with a backhanded accusation of bigotry, then you are not being candid. but i think we’re really getting down to brass tacks with your announcement of your ‘qualifications,’ aren’t we.
haha wait–what exactly do you think intentional fallacy means?
Sorry, confused it w/ logical fallacy, but it doesn’t matter because we’re clearly talking in circles at this point and not even addressing the primary point.
*Idiom is an integral component of the Southern Literary Tradition.
*Tom Franklin, a writer often associated with the above tradition, is known for his use of idiom.
*In this excerpt, he uses idiomatic language in spots.
*A few posters critiqued that language superficially, as if the language weren’t being used as idiom.
*The above is different than acknowledging the author’s use of idiom, and then arguing that his use of idiom doesn’t work, but their critiques were obviously not presented in such a fashion.
we’re actually in agreement that some of the posters using nitpicky mechanical arguments were missing the forest for the trees, and I take no issue with your asterisks above. just felt that some of your counter-arguments were equally superficial and fallacious. I’m really not agitating for or against tom franklin. I’m agitating for writers to overcome the kind of pat, alienating, zero-sum rhetoric that so disastrously characterizes modern political life. real talk.
Touche (seriously, this time), but it’s not like Justin Taylor’s post is “alienating.” I don’t think he meant, literally, that the paragraph is perfect, or the best paragraph in literary history. He was simply passing along a piece that excited him. The people who nit-picked the passage to death and read too much into his claim that the paragraph is “the best ever” started the zero-sum ball rolling.
Perfect, really? I know I know. Die again horse, die.
yeah, taylor’s initial post was fine. really not much more to say on this topic, except now I’m curious to find out what will happen if this thread goes on for much longer. will the column shrink to an infinitely dense point that collapses the entire internet?