Spunk & Bite Page 17

  Now what about the sample sentence quoted above? Dependent clauses do not necessarily make for bad “entrances,” but the clutter of this opener gives me trouble; I must stumble through a distracting aside, hyphenated adjectives, and five loud images before reaching the low-energy subject and its verb (“I travelled”).The phrase “maximum cholesterol breakfast” feels previously owned, trailing negative energy as if from some health newsletter.

  The pathway to the sentence’s exit is also clogged: more hyphenated adjectives; a pileup of images; and descriptions of distance, dimension, and direction, all jerking the mind’s eye this way and that.

  The sentence does what writers are always urged to do: It uses concrete, sensory images, which are generally more stimulating than abstractions. But images are powerful ch’i-attracting “objects”; fs can help guide their placement. For me, the power of “buttered hotcakes” overwhelms the blink-and-you-miss-it imagery that follows. Is that bad fs, or was I just hungry?

  Fs is hardly an exact science. Codified, yes, but varied within its several warring schools. Western practitioners tend toward flexible, subjective approaches. Below are two other food-minded sentences that, in my subjective view, seem more hospitable to ch’i:

  That fried bread’s aroma, a lilting thread of nearly crystalline or caramelized air rising to the upper floors (smoke curling in cat’s-cradle configurations up the stairs and under the doors of the rooms where her sisters were sleeping), roused the ever-plump and food-loving Irene from her slumbers, and this sister, in a great flannel gown and with red ribbons in her pigtails, soon had made her way into the kitchen. (—Oscar Hijuelos, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien)

  Here the strong image (“aroma”) is the subject, welcoming ch’i into the first “room” of this compound sentence. Parentheses slow it momentarily, but lush modifiers and sibilant sounds carry the ch’i through sensual curves and curls until the yang-ish verb (“roused”) ushers it toward the yin-ish object (“Irene”). When the sentence veers into its second room (“and this sister . . .”), it does so at a natural, gentle angle. The ch’i is drawn onward by the color red—the magnetic, fire-element color—and it exits through the kitchen.

  According to the fs principle of “like attracts like,” each positive element in the sentence seems to attract others, just as one disruptive element would do damage beyond itself. Offensive elements, such as outdated and sexist terms, can generate so much shar-ch’i for a reader that they function as ch’i drains—much like that flushing toilet.

  Here’s the other culinary sentence:

  It’s something to see, the way she concentrates, her hot, busy face, the way she thrills to see the dish take form as she pours the stewed fruit into the fancy mold, pressing the thickly cut bread down over the oozing juices, feeling it soften and absorb bit by bit a raspberry redness. (—Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries )

  Okay—if we present any more soft-bread imagery we’ll soak up all the ch’i. But again, the sensual object of the sentence is well placed, receiving action within a smooth flow of activity. The opening clause is like an invitation, a door thrown open to ch’i. Simple but concrete language carries the force along until it hits “oozing juices.” This potent phrase comes close to creating a ch’i “pool,” a junction so energized it bottles up the flow. But to the rescue comes “raspberry redness,” once again employing the draw of red, that magnetic color. The sentence’s parallel structure and mirror-like repetitions also beam the ch’i forward, deflecting it from potential sticking points.

  * * *

  FENG SHUI “CURES” FOR BAD-CH’I WRITING

  Through intricate means, feng shui attempts to cure the disrupted ch’i of one’s living space. Its tools include colors, scents, and live plants; powerful or heavy objects; mirrors; and sounds, such as chimes.

  Such tools have many analogues in writing, among them color, scent, and nature imagery; forceful verbs and weighty nouns; “mirrored” (echoed) words, sounds, and constructions; and euphonious words and sound combinations.

  Often one “power” word in a sentence releases the ch’i of an entire passage. I remember coming across such a word in a news story on border-town traffic. Just as the piece was getting bogged down with details, the sentence “Diesel fumes marinate the air” uncorked its ch’i. The hot yang verb “marinate” was perfectly placed in the context of the whole.

  Many are the fs cures and their variations. But when syntax hits the wall, when emphasis is muddled and meanings blocked, the best fix may be to refurnish the house; that is, bring in new elements and rearrange everything. The following sentence (from a newspaper editorial) might need such a cure, with its impossible angles and ch’i-draining components: “By struggling to find ways to overcome patterns that exclude the differences that make life worth living, he developed a vision that is consistently unethical.”

  Bear in mind that a sentence, though handy as a model for applying feng shui, is but one small element of flowing prose, one rivulet in the landscape. It is the whole work that must sit in the “belly of the dragon”—the feng shui metaphor for a perfect house setting.

  * * *

  THE FENG SHUI CHECKUP

  Intuition traditionally plays a part in applying fs to landscapes and dwellings. But fitting environmental principles to prose and poetry is essentially an analytic process, an editorial act. In this respect, writers should check their work for sound fs principles well apart from the act of creation. To block creative flow with any left-brain editorial process is bad fs.

  Once in the analytic mode, poets can examine such ch’i-sensitive elements of their verses as piled-up images and line breaks, while prose writers might attack these ch’i-unfriendly elements, among others:

  • excessive parenthetical asides;

  • a monotony of “straight-line,” or simple, sentences;

  • clichés, dead metaphors, and worn-out phrases;

  • dangling participles and misplaced modifiers;

  • subject-verb disagreement;

  • shifts in tense;

  • relentless use of passive voice.

  As I name these grammatical terms, I can hear the scoffers asking, “Well, isn’t fs just a lot of mumbo jumbo when it comes to writing—or does it really tell us something that, say, The Elements of Style doesn’t?”

  My answer is that only a personal exploration of fs will tell. For me, fs has added a concrete, palpable dimension to the principles of clarity presented in The Elements of Style. It has helped me balance Strunk and White’s yin approach with a more aggressive yang point of view. But there remain a zillion aspects of fs that are beyond my ambition to extrapolate, and which we leave untouched here: Among them are the critical interrelatedness of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood (and their symbolic equivalents), and the importance of the bagua—a type of diagram that maps the flow of energy within nine life areas (including wealth, fame, luck, and health).

  So who can say what new insights fs brings to word arrangement? For skeptics, the more answerable question might be: Do guides like The Elements of Style reveal anything that feng shui practitioners didn’t understand some three thousand years ago?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  HUNTING DOWN DANGLERS

  Glancing through The New York Times obituaries the other day, the face of a recently deceased thespian caught my attention.

  As this sentence of mine alleges, a dead actor’s face did indeed catch my attention the other day. But according to how the sentence actually reads, that face did a creepy something else: It rose up from the newspaper to cast theatrical glances at the surrounding obits.

  How is this the case? Because, although the sentence starts off with a clause about what I was doing (“glancing through the obituaries”), the word I never shows up to perform the action. Instead, face appears as the subject, so that logically only face could do the glancing. Devious, isn’t it?

  Had “I,” the true glancer, made an appearance, the actor’s face cou
ld have rested in peace. But, alas, I allowed a modifying phrase (“Glancing through The New York Times obituaries the other day”)to dangle—to sit there all by itself, without the target (“I”) it was intended to modify. As a result, I let down the phrase, the sentence, its readers, everyone. That’s what danglers do.

  To make amends, I would offer rewrites such as, Glancing through the NYT obituaries the other day, I spotted the face of a recently deceased thespian, or, Appearing in the NYT obituaries the other day, the face of a deceased thespian caught my attention.

  We pride ourselves on making beautiful matches between our subjects, verbs, and modifiers. Yet dangling verbal phrases and other forms of misplaced modifiers are popping up in all the best-edited media, not to mention in such usual haunts as student writing, conversation, and sportscasting. Simply seek and you will find them, perhaps even in a piece you’re readying for submission. Danglers may not mark the end of civilization, but they sully our little corner of it.

  YEARNING MODIFIERS

  Back, back, into grammar class for just a second. Remember participles, those modifying words derived from verbs? In the sentence Writing madly, she didn’t notice the killer, for example, writing is a present participle that modifies she; and in the phrase A book written for money, the word written is a past participle, modifying book.

  Often a participle finds itself controlling a group of words, which is then called a participial phrase. For example, the participle writing controls the participial phrase Writing her quota every morning, which appears in the sentence Writing her quota every morning, she soon had three chapters. Can you see how the whole participial phrase, controlled by a verb form, yearns to modify something in a nearby clause—something to perform the action? No wonder the nearest noun or pronoun is often grabbed for the job. But in our sentence, because the controlling participle is writing, it has to modify a subject that actually does the writing. When that logical subject is missing or misplaced, the participle dangles. Consider this sentence: Writing her book every morning before the kids arose, the strain was more than she could bear. Can a strain write? I don’t think so. The phrase is a dangler.

  And so the hunt for dangling participles is on, at least for us early rising writers. Some observers hunt them mainly to fatten their list of howlers—“Slathered with cream cheese, she brought the bagels to her handsome neighbor”—greeting them with a “haw, haw.” But I encounter them ruefully.

  Why ruefully? Because it vexes me to see participial phrases, one of our language’s most elegant constructions, so corrupted. Participial phrases may be overworked in journalism, where some writers, for the sake of varied structure, haul them into every few sentences: Appearing before the judge, she. . . . ; Dressed in a three-button suit, he . . . ; and so on. But at their best, they function like stage sets, yielding a dramatic rush for the reader as the curtains part and a sentence begins. Their flash of background or setting illuminates the forward action. With a pleasing rhythm, a participial phrase swings into the heart of the sentence—or extends it meaningfully, like a coda:

  “And I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.”

  (Proverbs 8:30)

  They contribute to the music of a beautiful complex sentence:

  Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,

  Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,

  Night and day journeys a coffin.

  (—Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”)

  There, in Whitman’s lines—see how the participial phrases modifying “coffin” keen the movement of Lincoln’s funeral procession across the states? Had those phrases dangled, the corpus might never have reached its place of rest.

  Find-the-Dangler can get a bit tiresome when focused on ludicrous results, as it so often is (Opening the casket, Lincoln seemed almost alive—get it?) But in literature, correct participles transfer emphatic power or grace from modifier to target. Missed targets are missed opportunities, not just logical fumbles. On we go, then, deeper into misplaced-modifier territory to spot the thieves of emphasis—but also to identify the danglers we can leave alone.

  COURTING TROUBLE

  Glancing through the nation’s newspaper of record the other day, then, I found not only the usual depressing news, but also the dolorous presence of a dangler. And once I began paying attention, I found several more danglers over the next few months, both here and in other shrines of American prose style. Often the slips were subtle and certainly understandable in deadline journalism— but they underscored the perils of modifiers once-removed from their logical targets. Such modifiers include not just participles, but also forms like this one, found on an editorial page:

  With jurisdiction over a range of family issues, including adoption, divorce, domestic violence, child custody, and juvenile delinquency, Family Court’s caseload has swelled enormously.

  Did you notice who has all that jurisdiction? The writer meant to communicate that Family Court does; but the subject actually being modified is “caseload.” This, Captain, is illogical; the “with” phrase is a modifier hooked to nothing that makes sense. It dangles.

  Two common problems sabotage the logic of the sentence. First, prolonged modifying leads to forgetfulness by the time the main clause comes along. Second, a possessive (“Family Court’s”)upstages the subject. A similar example: After talking to the philodendron every day for a week, including evenings, when she would add a prayer, Aunt Amelia’s plant began to perk up. (But not to talk to itself or a fellow philodendron, as the sentence, whose subject is plant and not Aunt Amelia, states.)

  Danglers are tricky devils within a demon class known variously as “hanging,” “unattached,” “wandering” “misplaced,” or “misrelated” modifiers. Like creatures who assume human form, they take on familiar shapes in our sentences, sometimes even animating them and conveying thoughts. More mischievous than malignant, they still have no business corrupting good sentence design.

  * * *

  WHEN GOOD MODIFIERS GO WRONG

  Here’s the surest way to see if a modifier is wonky as used in its sentence. Identify the subject being modified, and stick the modifier right after it. Then ask, “Would the sentence make sense if written this way?” For example, take this sentence heard on National Public Radio: “Unlike other national holidays, most Americans go to work on Martin Luther King Day.” Now the test: “Americans, unlike other national holidays, go to work on Martin Luther King Day.”The result is one big “huh?” in need of a rewrite. Try your rephrasing skills on these examples, too:

  • “As a valued Preferred Customer, your order has been double-checked for quality.” (—President, Seattle Filmworks, promotional literature)

  • “Other than impending baldness, the future looks bright for Moby.”(—Illinois Entertainer)

  • “Inserting the uprights, the rudimentary plan of an outsize four-poster began to emerge.” (—Redmond O’Hanlon, Into the Heart of Borneo)

  • “By lifting the hips, the trousers were pulled free.” (—John McGahern, By the Lake)

  * * *

  MEN WHOSE MODIFIERS WANDER

  The sentence sounds perfectly idiomatic: To understand men, one thing has to be remembered. But as so often happens in sentences opening with an “infinitive phrase,” there is no subject to carry out the action of the infinitive verb. In our example, “thing,” is the only subject, here incapable of understanding men or any other topic. Little wonder that men are poor misunderstood creatures, or that danglers sneak into their manuscripts, applications, and corporate advertisements. (Well, into women’s, too.)

  A recent full-page ad promoting The Wall Street Journal, for example, featured an executive crowing about meticulous copywriting. One would expect perfection here, in an ad pertaining to writing skills. But instead, the executive dropped a dangler to this effect: “Afte
r working as writer and creative director, Pat F invited me to visit F M .” What he’d meant was, “After I {not Pat F } had worked as a writer . . .” The executive probably got to keep his job anyway; but for lesser job seekers, a single dangler in a cover letter may be one too many. I once received a cover letter from an applicant claiming twenty years of communications experience. It included these two fatal sentences:

  As a marketing strategist, my livelihood depended upon the time/cost value of meeting client expectations . . . I wish to use my considerable communication skills to help your house maintain high standards in grammar, spelling and sentence structure as a proofreader and/or copy editor.

  The first dangler is like those so common in obituaries: A native of Chicago, his ashes will be scattered over Wrigley Field. (The modifying phrase searches in vain for the deceased.)

  The applicant’s second sentence offered to make my publishing house a better proofreader. Here is an instance of a wandering rather than dangling modifier. Why didn’t the writer place the phrase “as a proofreader and/or copyeditor” next to “skills,” instead of letting it wander off where it seemed to refer to “house”?Perhaps, knowing how fast applications are read, he feared slowing down the sentence before he got to the idea of helping us. But he didn’t help his cause.