Writing Styles

I’ve just finished reading “How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One” by Stanley Fish. I found the book to be enlightening and fun to read, despite my misgivings from having read a few of Fish’s NY Times columns.

For the practical writer, who cowers before a pen and paper or a computer screen when compelled to write, Fish argues a rather simple compelling thesis: master the sentence and the rest will follow. For Fish, the sentence, and not the word, is the fundamental unit of any composition.

So while your next great novel won’t necessarily start with that killer first line you just came up with -although it certainly could!- you would have a greater command of composition by playing within the microcosm of the sentence.

My favorite part of the book were the chapters on the two dominant formal sentence styles: subordinating and additive – or if you prefer Greek, hypotaxis and parataxis.

The subordinating sentence style describes sentences that are deliberately constructed and follow an internal logic. An exercise that helps to demonstrate this style is to take a simple three word sentence and then logically expand the details of the sentence’s objects and actions.

“Bob drove his car.”
“As he careened past tractor-trailers and weaved through minivans and sedans, Bob, feeling scared, anxious, and -dare he admit it to himself?- even a bit giddy, recklessly drove his car with his overly-pregnant wife by his side as she entered into her seemingly millionth contraction, punctuated by just as many screams, since they left the funeral.”

Pro-tip: If you want to David Foster Wallace-ize a sentence, insert into your sentence more science tangents, endnotes, and maybe even a fake filmography while you’re at it.

An additive sentence consists of components which are not necessarily bound by logic, but instead have the effect of setting a scene, internal or external, for the reader.

Fish offers this example from Hemingway.

“A large white yacht was coming into the harbor and seven miles out on the horizon you could see a tanker, small and neat in profile against the blue sea, hugging the reef as she made to the westward to keep from wasting fuel against the stream.”

I’m still practicing this style. The above example does the style its due justice far better than I at the moment.

As I was contemplating how these styles complement each other, I was struck by a flurry of analogies. Perhaps the simplest is of the sentence itself. Much like the form, or lack of form, of a sentence gives space and structure to content, so do subordinating sentences in a larger composition. They form the logical outline of a work. Meanwhile, additive style sentences provide the “human” content, whether they are a character’s thoughts, the setting of a scene by an observer, a discussion of abstract ideas, etc.

Or, one could see these two complementing styles as a type of paint-by-numbers. The logical sentences form the outline, the colored paints provide vibrancy, temperature, and detail. Or, we can compare these styles to components of a piece of pop-music, where subordinating sentences are the AABA verse-chorus-bridge structure, and the additive sentences are the lyrics, chords, and melody.

Throughout the book, Fish draws the line between style versus content, structured versus unstructured. He counters critics who say that an adherence to form hinders creativity by countering that hindrance to form is actually fecund ground for creativity. At times, he even goes so far as to say that there would be no creativity without form.

I agree. What use is creativity without a vessel to express it?

But while this is an attractive idea, it’s important not to get too caught up in a hard distinction between the two. Human thought, for example, switches between modes all the time: disjointed thoughts and recollection one second, attempts to logically reason the next second.

Some days it seems like my internal struggle is to order the barrage of information which batter the barricades and flood the hold. Other days the struggle is reversed: trying to see beyond the thicket of logic to the larger human experience which shyly secrets itself away.

What’s the best part of both struggles? Thinking about the struggles themselves. The seamless synthesis between the two generates a more complete picture of human achievement and potential. If we were to briefly adopt and modify the ancient view that a composition reflects the moral sanctity of its composer, than we can hope that a good piece of writing reflects the author’s thoughtful internal struggle between the poles of reason and unreason. Any work that calls attention to such a critical aspect of human thought and creativity is worthy of admiration.

So, beyond the composition advice and basic grammatical notes, I recommend “How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One” for its unique consideration of the never-ending struggle between craft and art.

About Me

My name is Sarang Shah.

I am a student at the University of Cambridge. have a Masters in theoretical physics from Trinity College Dublin. My bachelor’s was earned at Georgia Tech respectively. I was a Mitchell Scholar in Dublin and a RISE Scholar in Berlin. I have also worked in national security policy, international affairs, computational neuroscience, public policy, politics, and economics.

I am currently seeking a career in international affairs, policy research and analysis, and journalism. I have significant experience living and traveling outside of the USA, and a keen interest in global affairs and languages. I founded and edit Distilled, a contemporary international affairs magazine. I have written analysis and commentary pieces for The Cambridge Student. I have also recently conducted research travel around the Caucasus, Turkey, and the Balkans.

My LinkedIn Profile / My Resume /  My Twitter Stream

Markets and Fundamental Particles

What do they have in common?

When economists devise new theories about the market, and people’s behaviors, the market responds through arbitrage, taking advantage of this new information to make more money, operate more efficiently, etc. Any participant in the market can pick up a copy of an economist’s published research paper and change their behavior accordingly.

The poor economist! The results no longer seem valid! So the cycle begins anew, economists study, agents respond, and back and forth. The early 20th century Austrian school of economics under von Mises knew this, and developed ideas about phenomenology as applied to economics.

But out of that trend toward phenomenology in the early 20th century led to a similar approach to fundamental physics. Especially as applied to quantum theory. Observing something at the quantum level changes it, so it is no longer possible to ascertain the state it was in prior to observation (to the extent that the concept of a pre-observation state is even logically useful). So observation causes the object of observation to respond correspondingly. Like economists and markets.

My analogy may seem a bit rough, but it’s important to remember that how we observe fundamental particles (ie. what theorists would tell an experimentalists to do to attempt to falsify a theory) is largely theory based on the most fundamental levels we can experimentally attain at this time. How we observe very much impacts how the system that is being observed responds. Increasingly complete observations and theories would have to encompass greater and greater subsystems into the system under consideration which leads ad-infinitum to nonsense.

So the point of my analogy is that theoretical physicists should take a cue from economists and very very carefully consider the role of theory in their work. Even if they aren’t philosophers. They should probably ignore everything else though, economics as a subject is dismal in many many ways.

On that note, here’s a good paper discussing the role of theory in economics.

The problem with the Library of Congress…

…as a unit of measurement.

The Library of Congress contains books. Books are composed of paragraphs, sentences, words, and letters. Each letter can be, more or less, represented by a byte (8 zeros and ones) in computer data space. So when we take apart all these books, we can measure the constituent data in terms of gigabytes, terabytes, etc.

So comparing bits to bits, we can say that the Large Hadron Collider produces 1,500 Libraries of Congress worth of data per experiment. But when we actually evaluate that claim, it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges (or in this case literature and scattering amplitudes).

In practice, the amount of data generated by reading a book is far more than the raw characters which compose it. This distinction is apparent if we were to take all the letters in all the books in the Library of Congress, randomly jumble them up, and reprint them into books. You would still have the same amount of data but the result would be nonsense!

Not to say that it isn’t fun to say my computer hard-drive contains “x” number of Libraries of Congress. However I’ll be really impressed if there is something invented which manages to capture the full extent of all the information in the Library of Congress.

Current Events Digest #1

December 18, 2010

A collection of thoughts and summaries on current events that I find interesting.

Turkey eases repatriation of minorities – There’s an interesting dynamic in Turkey where the ruling Turkish administration leans on hardline religious rhetoric (Turkey has been a secular nation since its founding by Attaturk) , but their foreign policy still maintains better than expected relations with its neighbors and its minorities, thanks to foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Of course, I think the Armenians, Kurds, Israelis, and Greeks may disagree to some extent, but so far the “Zero Problems” approach with neighbors seems to be fairly successful. I’ll write more about Turkish foreign affairs in later installments as I think Turkey is a vastly important transcontinental nation to follow for security, cultural, and political reasons over the next 20 years.

Judge who struck down mandate from Affordable Care Act freely admits to supporting Republican Party throughout his life, credits his appointment to it – In general, trying to deny or extinguish politics from politics is ludicrous. There’s no such thing as an independent judiciary, or “no label” solution to problems. It’s worse that Democrats fall for this more than Republicans. So, in short, at least Judge Hudson is being honest about his role in modern politics (if not a bit disconcertingly unashamed of looking partisan), but it’s probably more important for us to reject the ruse that the judiciary is the least bit independent.

Marginal tax rates on additional personal income beyond 250k doesn’t really translate to jobs. Personal income has a more limited bearing on job creation (other than hiring butlers I suppose), than the personal income of the middle class fueling demand. As was pointed out in a keen RSA video, rather than fueling middle-class demand, we’ve seen a preference to just supply the middle-class with credit to keep the good times rolling.

David Rothkopf picks some of the absolute worst positions to staff the Obama administration – These are easily the worst personnel decisions I’ve ever seen for an administration. If I had to choose the absolute worst choices for each of these positions, I would have come up with this list.

DADT Repeal Passes, DREAM Act fails – Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is repealed. This is without a doubt good news.Downside: This could be the end of existence. On the other hand, the DREAM Act did not pass the Senate, which would have given many children of illegal immigrants who also immigrated illegally at a young age the ability to continue attending college or serve in the military and also pursue a path to citizenship. The failure of the DREAM Act is an embarrassment and deeply shameful for everyone who did not vote in favor. While Republicans in general opposed the act, they were joined by many Democrats as well. Many of these young adults and children have no connection at all to their parent’s country, so the failure of the DREAM Act only prolongs dealing humanely with the problem. Of course many of those who voted against the bill support something more inhumane, like deportation. Nevertheless, it took Don’t Ask Don’t Tell a long time to be repealed, it’s only going to take longer for the DREAM Act. Let’s not even talk about how long it will take to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) or Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) or cap and trade or…

A New Rough Track

Music! That I’ve written! That’s new.

It’s a bit rough around the edges, but I hope that it’s a good place to start improving. Altogether, I’m actually quite proud of it. I went from a blank start to finish in about 5 hours.

Also, if I were to start naming tracks now, the track names would be incredibly silly. It’s better that I not go there.

Since WordPress is dead set against me embedding an audio player into the post, go to this link at Podomatic where I’ve uploaded the track

Reboot

This blog is getting a reboot.

links for 2009-11-14

• [0911.2334v1] Feedback-dependent control of stochastic synchronization in coupled neural systems
  (tags: physics, neuroscience)
• The Sartorialist
  Check out the interview with the Sartorialist on the latest episode of the Sound of Young America
  (tags: fashion, culture, design)

links for 2009-11-09

• WNYC – Lopate – Please Explain
  Please Explain is a weekly feature of the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC where Lopate invites an expert in some subject (this week it's alcohol) to field questions from the host and listeners. The show is particularly good on inviting experts from scientific fields without overdosing on the cutesiness of RadioLab (which is a good program but sometimes is a bit too much).
  (tags: radio, science)
• Grist | Environmental News, Commentary, Advice
  Environmental news and green living tips from Grist, the most recognizable voice in environmental journalism.
  (tags: environment)
• Fractal weather – Boing Boing
  (tags: fractals,physics)
• Toward a Slow-News Movement « Mediactive
  Not sure how we could ever step back as a society from the brink of 24-hour cable news madness, but at the very least I hope that policymakers (especially Democrats) try harder to not get panicked by minor stories blown out of proportion by a news media with an increasingly diminishing share of viewers.
  (tags: news)

Erin go Bragh! (Éire go Brách)

You may have noticed a lack of posts. That is because it is unwise to start a blog a-new a week before a major move to another country.

Not to worry, I have drafted a number of posts which will be put up later this week, so continue to tune in. I will be talking about:

• space and time (and how anyone can have a cocktail party knowledge of general relativity in 5 minutes)
• the verdict on Evernote, Mind Node, and a few other productivity apps
• a further description of my Google Docs organization system (have you checked out the Daily Log Template?)
• Pictures and stories of my travel and tips on visiting Ireland
• And how even a basic organization system, and 15 minutes a day, can turn any average achiever into someone extraordinary

I’ll keep the blog updated on my experiences and let you know what works and what does not.

See you in Ireland!