I took a passage from my critical writing paper, which seemed a bit clunky and bland and unsophisticated, and tried out a bunch of Kolln’s chapter 9 strategies. Vote for the one you like best. Sorry, the period for voting by cell phone has ended, so you must respond via blog.
- OLD: Slavin thus transforms what seems inexpressible into language. Slavin isn’t the only writer to utilize this strategy. Aimee Bender, Stacy Richter, and Judy Budnitz, among other contemporary magical realists, have done the same in their own fiction.
- NEW: Slavin thus transforms what seems inexpressible into language. She isn’t the only writer to utilize this strategy. Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, Stacy Richter—they all have entered strange realms through the magical keyhole of metaphor. (As Kolln says, an opening appositive series is certainly dramatic, and who doesn’t love drama (201)?) (What do you do to parenthesis within parenthesis? It seems like the English language should have a rule to deal with that.)
- NEW: Slavin thus transforms what seems inexpressible into language. She isn’t the only writer to utilize this strategy. Entering strange realms by passing through metaphor’s looking glass, Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, and Stacey Richter join Slavin on the magical realist, illness narrative train. (hmm. I think I’m mixing my metaphors here; plus the end of that sentence is a bit of a mouthful
- NEW: Slavin thus transforms what seems inexpressible into language. Joining her in use of this strategy, Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, and Stacy Richter also enter strange realms in their own illness narratives through the use of metaphor. (hmm. The end of this sentence, with its ending prepositional phrase, also sounds clunky.)
- NEW: Slavin thus transforms what seems inexpressible into language. Other contemporary magical realists—Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, Stacy Richter—also utilize the strategy of metaphor to great effect in illness narratives of their own.
I’m voting for the orange sentence. It doesn’t have the dramatic flourish of some of the other sentences, but it seems the cleanest and clearest of these four options. What do others think? Would it really be terrible to let that looking glass metaphor go? I mean, how can you beat a sentence talking about use of metaphor that actually itself is using a metaphor?
You could combine the orange one, which I agree with you, is nice and clean, with the metaphor in the purple one, couldn't you? Make the last bit "also enter strange realms by passing through metaphor's looking glass." Is that too much? Or maybe add the looking-glass into your first sentence, "into language by passing through..." and leave the second as-is. I don't know. I like the orange one as it stands, but you could easily drama it up.
ReplyDeleteI think I agree...combine orange with purple.
ReplyDelete(I think you get brown...)
anyway, I like the looking-glass phrase quite a bit, but "jumped ship" at the train metaphor.
Applause for your experimentation!