Sunday Sentence
In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”
Here he was, in his essays and interviews, making informed, nuanced arguments about the way we live now — about anything from Twitter (which he is against) to the way political correctness has been weaponized to shut down discourse (which he is against) to obligatory self-promotion (which he is against) to the incessant ending of a phone call by saying, “I love you” (which he is against, but because “I love you” is for private) — and though critics loved him and he had a devoted readership, others were using the very mechanisms and platforms that he warned against (like the internet in general and social media in specific) to ridicule him.
Source: Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It” (The New York Times Magazine)
“That’s a sentence?” was my first reaction.
The only one I can remember that I’ve seen longer was a 146 word part of an NYC rent control agreement.
Long sentences sure do make an impression—the writer points out in this piece how remarkable it is that Franzen “speaks” in long sentences, too.