I have yet to see the film version of "
Brokeback Mountain," but, as we say in literary circles, I have read the book, which was first a short story in
The New Yorker. The author,
Annie Proulx, is a self-conscious stylist, at times too self-conscious for my taste, which means she sometimes has me admiring her prose rather than grasping her message.
She is winning me over, mostly by her mastery of the long sentence. I have chosen two for your consideration from "Brokeback Mountain":
1.) They had a high-time supper by the fire, a can of beans each, fried potatoes and a quart of whiskey on shares, sat with their backs against a log, boot soles and copper jeans rivets hot, swaping the bottle while the lavender sky emptied of color and the chill air drained down, drinking, smoking cigarettes, getting up every now and then to piss, firelight throwing a sparkle in the arched stream, tossing sticks on the fire to keep the talk going, talking horses and rodeo, roughstock events, wrecks and injuries sustained, the submarine Thresher lost two months earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the last doomed minutes, dogs each had owned and known, the draft, Jack's home ranch where his father and mother held on, Ennis's family place folded years ago after his folks died, the older brother in Signal and a married sister in Casper.
Notice the location of the subject and verb of the main clause: "They had a high-time supper..." That makes meaning early and creates the space for that inventory of conversation, color and memory.
2.) Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis's fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist and never a vacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to step out and have any fun, his yearning for low-paid, long-houred ranch work, his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or the power company, put her in a long, slow dive and when Alma Jr. was nine and Francine seven she said, what am I doing hangin around with him, divorced Ennis and married the Riverton grocer.
Proulx has now given us a pattern for how the good long sentence might work:
Make meaning early with subject and verb; clear out some space for an inventory of detail or action; make the length of the sentence fit the length of the content or meaning.
Jeffrey, thank you for the reminder that remembrances of literary...
