Volume VI, Issue 40 October 2, 2017 Word of the Week: chicken Dear ,
I learned last week from The Writer’s Almanac that Faulkner’s novel Absalom, Absalom! made The Guinness Book of World Records for containing "the longest single sentence in literature."
"It’s in chapter six,” Garrison Keillor
said.
Of course, I had to check this out, great fan of long sentences that I am! After clicking a number of links, I found a site run by someone kind (and dedicated) enough to post this freakishly long sentence. (along with 64 others!) This one sentence is too long, at well over 1,000 words, to use in its entirety as this week's featured writing, but the first 418 words are below. Wow, what a feat of a sentence! And it has chickens in it.
I'm a big fan of chickens, especially the chickens belonging to my friends Elizabeth and Lisa, who are kind enough to share their beautifully colored eggs with me. on Friday, as I started putting this zine together, I was wondering what I would use for a photo. Shouldn't it be something with at least one
chicken?
My brother Tim and I were on our way to Atlanta to visit some relatives on Saturday morning, and our plans shifted at 10:34 a.m. when a text came in that our aunt was sick and couldn't see us.
"Why don't you find us a place for lunch on the way?" Tim asked. "Check out roadfood.com."
Luck was with us. A place not too far off our path called Grits & Groceries had a five-star rating. We had a yummy brunch, and look what was out front.
Not only do I like chickens, I like that the word "chicken" is used in interesting ways that harken back to when most everyone saw
live chickens regularly. Like "don't count your chickens before they hatch," and "don't be a chicken," and "playing chicken."
Faulkner was clearly no chicken of a writer, going so far in his 1983 Guinness
Book of World Records-winning sentence to insert, between one of his subjects ("the rusty scythe") and its verb ("would lean"),—while he is already inside parentheses, mind you!—34 words, which include, among numerous other things, one adjective, two dashes, three pronouns, four infinitives, six verbs, and innumerable weeds.
Read it below and marvel. And why not try your hand at an outrageous sentence yourself? Even better, why not put a chicken in it? You can be frivolous (if you need a bit of frivolity today) or serious (like
Faulkner.)
Love and light,
Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
COASTAL WRITING RETREATS Connect with Your Creativity at
the Sunset Inn
(Writing—and more—as Renewal and Inspiration)
Due to response, this retreat will be offered on two different weekends: November 10th – 12th and November 17th – 19th. Pick the dates that work best for you.
Renew yourself and reconnect with your own creativity, whether you are a practicing writer, closet writer, or as-yet-to-pick-up-the-pen writer! The techniques and prompts we’ll use will spur your imagination, and can be used to create
nonfiction, fiction, and/or poetry—the choice is yours.
$418 + room tax for the weekend beginning either Friday, November 10th through Sunday November 12th or Friday, November 17th through Sunday, November 19th. The Coastal Writing Retreat includes writing sessions, two nights’ lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included).
Want to extend your retreat? If you’d like to stay another day to write, or to just enjoy the beach, the Inn is offering Coastal Writing Retreat participants the opportunity to stay Sunday night at half
price.
(Extra writing retreat sessions are a possibility too. Email info@wordplaynow.com if you’re interested.)
WHERE: The Sunset
Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, November 10th – Sunday, November 12th, 2017
~ and also ~ Friday, November 17th – Sunday, November 19th, 2017
TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888.575.1001 or 910.575.1000 (if you would like to handpick your room, view your choices here first, then call). Because the Inn is holding rooms for our retreat participants, a number of them are blocked off as unavailable online. Phone to check on your choice.
*Also, please let the Inn know when you call if you are interested in staying Sunday night, November 12th or 19th, at half price. The Inn will hold your reservation with a credit card.
More WordPlay
opportunities here. Featured
Writer
William Faulkner
Photo courtesy of https://www.thefamouspeople.com Bio
courtesy of https://www.biography.com
American writer William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in 1897. Much of his early work was poetry, but he became famous for his novels
set in the American South, frequently in his fabricated Yoknapatawpha County, with works that included The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom! His controversial 1931 novel Sanctuary was turned into two films, 1933's The Story of Temple Drake as well as a later 1961 project. Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature and ultimately won two Pulitzers and two National Book
Awards as well. He died on July 6, 1962.
(That’s the official bio, but it’s quintessential Faulkner that, according to The Writer’s Almanac, “when President John F. Kennedy invited Faulkner, then teaching in Charlottesville, Virginia, to dine at the White House with other Nobel Prize laureates, Faulkner famously declined, saying, ‘Why, that’s a hundred miles away. That’s
a long way to go just to eat.’”)
Featured
Writing
An Excerpt from Chapter 6 of
Absalom, Absalom by William
Faulkner
Just exactly like Father if Father had known as much about it the night before I went out there as he did the day after I came back thinking Mad impotent old man who realised at last that there must be some limit even to the capabilities of a demon for doing harm,
who must have seen his situation as that of the show girl, the pony, who realises that the principal tune she prances to comes not from horn and fiddle and drum but from a clock and calendar, must have seen himself as the old worn-out cannon which realises that it can deliver just one more fierce shot and crumble to dust in its own furious blast and recoil, who looked about upon the scene which was still within his scope and compass and saw son gone, vanished, more insuperable to him now than if
the son were dead since now (if the son still lived) his name would be different and those to call him by it strangers and whatever dragon's outcropping of Sutpen blood the son might sow on the body of whatever strange woman would therefore carry on the tradition, accomplish the hereditary evil and harm under another name and upon and among people who will never have heard the right one; daughter doomed to spinsterhood who had chosen spinsterhood already before there was anyone named Charles Bon
since the aunt who came to succor her in bereavement and sorrow found neither but instead that calm absolutely impenetrable face between a homespun dress and sunbonnet seen before a closed door and again in a cloudy swirl of chickens while Jones was building the coffin and which she wore during the next year while the aunt lived there and the three women wove their own garments and raised their own food and cut the wood they cooked it with (excusing what help they had from Jones who lived with
his granddaughter in the abandoned fishing camp with its collapsing roof and rotting porch against which the rusty scythe which Sutpen was to lend him, make him borrow to cut away the weeds from the door—and at last forced him to use though not to cut weeds, at least not vegetable weeds—would lean for two years) and wore still after the aunt's indignation had swept her back to town to live on stolen garden truck and out of anonymous baskets left on her front steps at night, the three of
them...
~ William Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom!
If you don't feel compelled to read Absalom, Absalom!, you can read this sentence at 65 Long Sentences in Literature. (You'll have to scroll down pretty far, as they are listed in order of length, but there are some wonderful long sentences along the way, including one from Winnie-the-Pooh. It's only 194 words, by the way.)
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week, it's
"chicken."
PROMPT: Write the longest sentence you can. You might want to study how Faulkner strings together his adjectives, nouns, verbs, phrases, clauses, and the like and do a bit of borrowing of sentence structure. Put a chicken in it, just so you have something concrete to get
you started. You can be frivolous (if you need a bit of frivolity today) or serious (like Faulkner). Your sentence can be stand-alone, or you can use it in a story, poem, essay, etc.
Have fun with this one, and see what you can learn in the process. And if you do this, send me your sentence. The best one
I receive before next Monday's zine comes out will win a small prize. MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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