Muse & the Marketplace 2019

“Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it, and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there....There’s a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer’s will to live.”

The above (from Don DeLillo's Mao II) is not just an eloquent description of the focus of this class, but an eloquent embodiment of it as well. Together we will be looking at sentences, the bedrock of our prose, with an eye towards rhythm and sense and sound. In so doing we'll hope to clarify, at least for ourselves, the difference between a good sentence, a bad one, and a great one, to say nothing of all those messy and indeterminate efforts that fall between.