Symptoms of the Circular Syntax Heart
Symptoms of the Circular Syntax Heart
| "'What's the matter with you? Don't put yourself on a platter. What
are you -- a roast duck, everything removable with a lousy piece of flatware?
Be secret. Turn over on your side. Let them guess if you're stuffed. That's
how I got where I am.' The organization of his ideas was all wrong; I was
drawn to the memory of myself -- a mere stripling of a girl -- the day
I learned that the shortest distance between two points is a great circle.
'Anyway, you ought to think in shorter sentences,' he suggested, although
I hadn't said a word. Old Richard the Liver Headed, he saw right through
to the heart of the matter, my syntax."
-- from Grace Paley's The Little Disturbances of Man |
