Assignment 2: Sentencing: The Good, The Bad, The Beautiful

I have already asked you to read the following two essays, which are on e-Reserve, and be on the lookout for splendid sentences:
1. Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence, pp. 1-44.
2. Jacques Barzun, "Words to Music" in Words on Music, ed. J. Sullivan, pp. 14-31.

To make some further suggestions for class discussion, if you haven’t already, I would like you to work with the Exercises presented in How to Write a Sentence. These are embedded in the text:
(1) p. 16, “look around the room and pick 4 or 5 items then add a verb and model auxiliary (would, should, could, must, may, might, shall, can, will)and make sentences out of them.
(2) p. 23, Expanding sentences. Take a little sentence (e.g., “Bob collects coins” or “John hit the ball”) and expand it to 15 words, then 30, then 100, never losing sight of doer-doing-done to structure.
(3) p. 30, “give yourself the assignment of writing a sentence in which three or even four time zones—past perfect, past, present, future—are structured into an account of related actions. You can start with any simple proposition, say, ‘We ate the pizza…”

Fish claims that the more you practice analyzing sentences, the better you’ll be at recognizing good sentences and writing them. Practice makes perfect. (Hey, a good sentence—and a cliché!)
Why does Fish downplay content in Chapter 3 (“It’s Not the Thoughts that Count”)?
Do you agree with his comments about the relationship of form to freedom? Can you think of examples in Music with specific composers or pieces?

For class, please bring in two examples each of Good, Bad, and Beautiful Sentences from the sources of musical criticism you have easily available (mostly on the web for now—see the web sites I listed last week—or from Greg Sandow’s syllabus or assigned reading). Be prepared to make the case, through Fishian (Fishy?) analysis for your choices.
Do you think that the Barzun article is “simple and direct?” (Remember that is the title of Barzun’s book on writing “good,” I mean well!) Can you find sentences that fit the middle category of our three (i.e., Bad)? [Greg has already beaten me too it on this with his blog post from today!]

Here are a couple of web sites for good opening and closing sentences of novels (I’ll leave out lists of bad sentences, since they are plentiful enough!):

100 Best First Lines from Novels:
http://americanbookreview.org/100BestLines.asp =
Also: http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0934311.html

100 Best Last Line (in novels):
http://americanbookreview.org/PDF/100_Best_Last_Lines_from_Novels.pdf