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sentence conjunctions and style
I'm reading a pretty darn good book, which I which review at some point. Right now I want to bring up something I've been thinking about for a while that I ran into in this unnamed novel: the use of "for" as a conjunction, as in this sentence:
Gloria resigned herself to making do, for that was the fate of the Delaney sisters.
Stylistically, this is quite old. It also feels somewhat stilted to me, maybe because it's exclusively a literary device. I don't think I've ever heard anybody use for as a conjunction in casual speech. So I was thinking about the alternates, and how each of them brings with it a very different style and sense.
Gloria resigned herself to making do, because that was the fate of the Delaney sisters.
Gloria resigned herself to making do; that was the fate of the Delaney sisters.
Gloria resigned herself to making do. That was the fate of the Delaney sisters.
Punctuation is a matter -- to a great degree -- of fashion. Fifteen years ago I sat in on a creative writing seminar at the University of Michigan taught by Ethan Canin, and I remembering him talking about his love of semi-colons. His philosophy was (and I quote): as many as you can fit in.
If you look at the novels of the literati in that time period, you'll see that he wasn't alone. John Irving, I remember, was so fond of semi-colons that he brought them into the forefront of the narrative. In The World According to Garp, the main character reads something written by a young woman and praises her: "Garp admired how the girl liked to use the good old semicolon." (I actually did remember this sentence, but I went to look it up to be sure.)
I'm talking only about overall trends, you understand. There are always counterexamples. You can find authors from any period who use semicolons a great deal, and authors who avoid them at all costs.
But back to the substitutes for for.
Whatever an author choses, it will suit his or her sense of the style and rhythm needs of the sentence, the passage, and the book as a whole. My personal sense is that for as a conjunction is stylistically suspect in stories set in the modern day. I experience it as a jolt out of the narrative flow, which isn't a good thing.
However, I will admit that once in a while, I have the urge to use for as a conjunction in my own writing. This is an urge I squash like a bug underfoot.
Of course now somebody will email or comment to quote a passage in one of my novels where the conjunction for stands proudly pointing an accusatory finger at me. In which case I will say only that I didn't squash hard enough and the little bugger survived against all odds.
Right now I'm thinking of trying to compile a short list of literary devices like this one. Usages that are no longer active in the spoken language but have survived in the written, hiding out between closed covers, planting themselves insidiously into the minds of readers in the hopes of making an escape back into the light of day.
I'll keep you posted.
September 1, 2005 11:36 AM
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Comments
Here's another word I sometimes see in published writing, which I personally never hear spoken:
thus
Please add it to your list.
Posted by: Alison at September 1, 2005 05:47 PM
Irving brings up the semicolon again in A Widow for One Year when Ruth's editor tells her that nobody knows that their function is anymore.
I think "for" is used so infrequently now that it can almost seem sarcastic. Does that make sense?
Posted by: sarandipity at September 2, 2005 01:53 PM
I'm not sure about sarcastic, but sometimes maybe there's an almost purposeful prissiness about it.
Posted by: sara at September 2, 2005 02:31 PM
Purposeful prissiness...yes, that's a better way of phrasing it. Same thing with 'thus.'
Posted by: sarandipity at September 2, 2005 02:46 PM