Behold the glory – and the enduring
frustration – of genius. Here is the opening line of William Faulkner’s novel,
“Absalom, Absalom,” considered by some critics to be the best novel ever
written about the American South.
From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of
the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss
Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that – a dim
hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three
summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving
air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone
fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow
slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead
old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have
blown them.
It was on the
strength of “Absalom, Absalom” and the more well-known “The Sound and the Fury”
that Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Novel Prize for Literature.
Generations of high
school students have struggled to master his dense, clause-choked,
idiosyncratic prose, his unhinged characters and his bleak assessment of the
human condition.
What to avoid
When I first started
teaching journalism writing and reporting, I used the passage above as an
example of what to avoid. Although it paints a vivid picture of the scene, it
requires fierce concentration and rigid discipline to absorb the author’s
description and give it meaning.
In short, it has a
comma problem. “Absalom, Absalom” opens with a 122-word sentence containing one
lonely comma.
True, it also has a
single dash and a parenthetical phrase that help the befuddled reader navigate
the treacherous literary landscape. But a hatful of commas would have helped
reader comprehension even more. So would a period or two.
Faulkner being
Faulkner, however, we are plunged into the sentence to fend for ourselves
without commas to foster understanding and deliver clarity. And the miserly
Faulkner didn’t stop there. He also banned the apostrophe in “o’clock.” (Admit
it, you thought I made a typo, didn’t you? Didn’t you?)
Raisins in a cookie
Me, I love commas. I
spread them liberally in my writing, like raisins in an oatmeal cookie. They are
the workhorses of good writing, serving as traffic signs to control pace and
tempo, and as guide rails to keep the reader on board and engaged.
Some writers
jealously hoard commas as if they were gold ingots, only parting with them
under extreme duress. Others apparently believe a passage sparse in commas and other
helpful punctuation aids displays a lofty disregard for literary conventions
and signals a creative free spirit.
Whatever. I figure,
rightly or wrongly, that if you've got ’em, use ’em.
Many of the rules for
comma usage are straight-forward and direct. Others, less so.
For instance, some writers
I’ve edited over the years struggle with how to deal with appositive clauses,
prepositional or otherwise.
Mrs. James told those
of us in her seventh grade English class that introductory prepositional
phrases of five words or more must be followed by a comma. It was a hard and
fast rule. Five words – or more. Mrs. James was no ditherer. Free will didn’t
amount to a bucket of spit in her domain.
It was only later
that I learned – after being buffeted by the wild winds of daily journalism –
that the minimum word count needed to trigger a comma alert was something best left
to the writer’s discretion – and to the needs of the particular sentence.
But who are we
kidding? Almost all introductory clauses, no matter the length, read better
followed by a comma.
For example:
At first light, the British garrison at Rorke’s Drift saw
the massing Zulu army arrayed across the veldt.
In truth, a bird in the hand is best left to join its
feathered companion in the bush, lest it poop on said hand.
A brief detour
The same principle
applies to prepositional phrases – or any type of appositive clause – that occurs
in the middle of a sentence. Because of the disruptive power of such
interruptions to the flow of the sentence, commas are useful in announcing to
readers that they’re being taken on a brief detour before they can continue
their trip to the next period.
The job of the writer
is to make sure the detour (a) is worth the delay (b) provides compelling
information and (c) doesn’t take too long.
My personal comma
conundrum is trying to remember whether restrictive or nonrestrictive words and
phrases should be set off by commas. Or to recall what the hell the difference
is between restrictive and nonrestrictive or, depending on the grammar text you
prefer, essential and nonessential.
If memory serves, commas
precede and follow nonrestrictive elements, the sort of parenthetical
information that isn’t necessary to the meaning of the noun they modify. Or it
is restrictive words and phrases that need commas? No, I just checked. Nonrestrictive – commas. Restrictive – no commas.
Perhaps I should tattoo that on my wrist.
Benjamin Dreyer, copy
chief of Random House, dubs the commas in nonrestrictive cases “only” commas.
In his brilliant
book, “Dreyer’s English,” he explains thusly: “‘Only’ commas…are used to set
off nouns that are, indeed, the only one of their kind in the vicinity.”
For example:
My dog, Bob, barks every time he hears a gnat fart in the
front yard. (I have only one
dog, the fictional Bob, so his name isn’t essential to identifying the source
of my frustration. Commas are required.)
My dog Bob barks every time he hears a gnat fart in the front
yard. (OK, I admit it. I
like to write the word fart. But my point
is that in this case, I have a pack of hounds, and only the aurally astute Bob
barks at insects with digestive issues. So no commas!)
Other examples:
My son, who is very good at math, just won a scholarship
to MIT. (My only son has won
a scholarship. His math skills, while important to MIT, are nonessential
information in identifying who won the scholarship.)
My son who is very good at math just won a scholarship to
MIT. (Of my two sons, one
is a math whiz who’s going to MIT.)
Here’s where it can
get tricky. Let’s take the following sentence:
Jill and husband Jack concocted a wildly improbable tale
about going up a hill to “fetch a pail of water.”
Provide nuance
Let’s leave aside my provocative
use of quotation marks to suggest Jill and Jack had impure motives for cresting
that dang hill. Notice instead that I didn’t put commas around Jack, even
though we can assume that the racy Jill only has one husband.
Why not? Because in this case, “husband” is a
label, a title if you will, that I have assigned to Jack. Just as we wouldn’t
write, Jill and coach, Jack, concocted…,
we don’t encase Jack in commas in the original sentence. If we place a “her” in
front of “husband,” however, it’s a different kettle of fish entirely.
Commas often provide
nuance to sentences.
The cavalry charge that occurred on the third day of the struggle
determined the victor of the Battle of Gettysburg. (Of all the cavalry charges at Gettysburg, the charge on
the third day was decisive.)
The cavalry charge, which occurred on the third day of
the battle, determined the victor of the Battle of Gettysburg. (Forget the infantry battles, the cavalry charge, which
just happened to occur on the third day, was decisive.)
The respective uses
of relative pronouns “that” and “which” in the sentences above are worthy of
note. Disregard the grammatical jabber and remember: That is never used with a comma in such constructions, and which is always used with the comma.
Simple, right?
The serial comma
I’ll end this little
discourse on commas with some brief observations about the serial comma.
I first was taught to
eliminate the comma before the conjunction in any series in my 11th
grade journalism class. My teacher, the venerable Erma Stewart, said it was one
of the things that distinguished newspaper writing from English class essays. She
might as well have been Moses delivering the 10 Commandments to the Israelites.
I was 16.
Lessons learned 50
years ago are hard to break.
So I’ll continue to shun
the serial comma as if it were a smallpox-tainted pillowcase. I owe that to Stewart,
a formidable woman who insisted her students address her only by her last name.
If you, however, wish
to follow the herd and embrace the unnecessary and wasteful serial comma, I
cannot stop you. When the hordes are at the gates, we must pick our battles
carefully.
I realize sadly that
with the death of newspapers, the triumph of the serial comma is all but
inevitable. We keepers of the flame must now steal quietly into the hills and
wait for better days.
A final word about
Faulkner’s interminable beginning to “Absalom, Absalom.”
Several years after I
started using it as an example of what not to do, I sat down and re-read the
passage in preparation for the next day’s lecture. Suddenly, I was reading it
with new eyes.
Where I once had seen
turgid prose, I now saw elegant word play and graceful pacing. Where once I had
struggled to comprehend, I now glided from word to word, phrase to phrase,
glorying in the beauty of the writing and the efficacy of the scene it painted.
The lecture I
presented the next day was much different from the ones I had delivered
previously about “Absalom, Absalom.” That proves, I guess, that you can teach
an old dog new tricks. And that only the dim and deranged refuse to keep learning. A fresh perspective is a wonderful thing, ain't it?
