Stunning Sentences

Articles

The Truth of "And"

2 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. It’s always the celebrities—the nouns and verbs and adjective—that get all the glory. But ever since I read The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir and her insight that it’s “and” that points to the truth, I’ve paid attention to it philosophically. Life and death; beauty and ugliness; joy and sorrow; mind and body. One does not preclude the other because life is far more complex and messy with opposites happening simultaneously.
The Art of Page One

2 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

This month, Holly Payne, who writes the substack Power of Page One, and I dove into the arresting first pages of Claire Oshetsky’s stunning debut novel, Chouette (2021)—a PEN/Faulkner Award longliste…
A Secret Power of Verbs

3 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

After Pearl dies, her daughter, Ada, inherits her house. Ada and her daughter, Pepper, move in and become increasingly entangled with the landscape and Pearl’s ghost or maybe her spirit or maybe Pearl herself. “Scenes are pinned to the pages by Wood’s extraordinary writing,” writes Andrew Sean Greer writes for The New York Times, “the finest language and imagery I’ve come across in a very long time. Precise, unindulgent, fresh and honest, every page is a celebration.” True, true.
The Paradox of Images

4 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. In this short story, the narrator explains how to write a true war story but within this expository structure, there’s a recurring story about the Vietnam war and the death of Curt Lemon. Every image has a built-in paradox, writes Catherine Brady in Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction. An image focuses the reader’s attention in a highly specific way and also generates a profusion of implications and associations.
Swimming in Style in May-Video

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

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The Art of Funny

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. In this short story, Joanna and her son, Leo, have gone to Denmark, ostensibly to give her common law ex-husband (or is he a “ex-common-law husband”) a wristwatch from Joanna’s deceased father. She’s also there to see if there’s still a spark, a little fire between them. But nine-year-old Leo wants to do other things.
Swimming in Style in May-Zoom Link

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

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The Delightful Digressive Sentence

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

This semester, I’m teaching alternative plots, and I recently introduced the digressive plot, or to use Daniel Mendelsohn’s terminology, rings, in which a plot deviates from the strict, straight line of causation. Then I was driving along, listening to Ross Gay on City Arts & Lectures podcast when he began talking about the digressive sentence and how he loves them.
The Exuberant Sentence

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. The narrator’s mother climbs the ladder above the Gator Pit in her green two-piece bathing suit and stands on the edge of the diving board, no spotlight shining on her—at least not yet. The narrator thinks this unlit entrance was probably her father’s idea and she blesses it as a good one.
The Art of Page One

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

I’m thrilled to share that Holly Payne, host of The Page One Podcast, has invited me to join her monthly for a granular look into the most powerful part of any novel—its opening lines.