By Noah BendzsaThe Department of English Language and Literature Student Blogger for 2021/2022
Like ballets and operas, many long old movies have intermissions, partway through, when viewers can get another popcorn or soda, or go to the washroom, or leave gracefully. There is an intermission in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Ben-Hur (1959), Giant (1956), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and My Fair Lady (1964). Gone with the Wind (1939), which is almost four hours long (and almost four hours too long), has a twenty-minute intermission.
In this intermission, I would like to pose two challenges for my readers. Both of them come from a very literary new film, The French Dispatch (2021), which is about the composition of three articles in the life of an editor-in-chief (Bill Murray) and his literary journal—The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun—headquartered in the fictional Ennui-sur-Blasé, France, from 1925 to 1975.
The first challenge concerns a comment, made by a proofreader, about an article written by J. K. L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) about the artist Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro). The proofreader deadpans: “Three dangling participles, two split infinitives, and nine spelling errors in the first sentence alone” (Anderson 7). My challenge for you is to write that sentence and send it to me (noahbendzsa@cmail.carleton.ca). The best three sentences I receive will be appended to my next blog post. They need not be about the fictional Rosenthaler, but they should be in the form of the first sentence of an article about some artist or creator—writer, moviemaker, singer, songwriter, actor, painter, sculptor, showrunner—fictional or not, living or dead. For the spelling mistakes, take inspiration from the days of pre-standardized spelling (from, for instance, Spenser and Chaucer). In order to make it all hold together, you will probably need a semicolon or two.
The second challenge is to identify, or at least speculate about, what the chart drawn up by the copy editor played by Elisabeth Moss is meant to reveal about the sentence, “They will fail to notice, under the corner of a threadbare rug, the torn ticket stub for an unclaimed hat which sits alone on the upper shelf of a cloakroom in a bus depot on the outskirts of the work-a-day town where Nickerson and his accomplices were apprehended” (3–4). And what’s with that sentence? Wouldn’t “They will fail to notice, under the corner of a threadbare rug, the torn ticket stub for the unclaimed hat that sits alone on the upper shelf of a cloakroom in a bus depot…” be better, or at least more conventional?
Regardless, try not to join Joseph Grand in your compositions and speculations. Sometimes, says Nickerson, a work-a-day sentence will do.
Exeunt moviegoers.
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Below are a two marvellous submitted sentences—one by Vivian Astroff, a fourth-year student studying the History and Theory of Architecture, and one by Professor Jody Mason, of the English Department—and one sentence I’ve written.
Having put all his egs into one baskit so to speek, the show q-rated by Dudel Thomson displayed a range of werk to clearly dazzle the eye’s, to totally overcom the brain and even stimulate a debate, hanging in the new gallry; it was certainly contraversial, being a carear highlight.V.A.
Having put all his egs into one baskit so to speek, the show q-rated by Dudel Thomson displayed a range of werk to clearly dazzle the eye’s, to totally overcom the brain and even stimulate a debate, hanging in the new gallry; it was certainly contraversial, being a carear highlight.
Traking Henry Jamze, after the fayled Guy Domville in London, to vividlie portray his secluzion in Rye, Jamze maykes masterpieces in Tóbín’s The Master, to carefully corral words to controll that which terrifyes.J.M.
Traking Henry Jamze, after the fayled Guy Domville in London, to vividlie portray his secluzion in Rye, Jamze maykes masterpieces in Tóbín’s The Master, to carefully corral words to controll that which terrifyes.
Broddly speeking, David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder is woden compaired to Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully—although a Yale-educated acter and x-pected to fanatically x-cel, Mulder has a perticular yen for the cerebral monologue—and to gently put it, he overextendes and lures in the fans with his paranoia.N.B.
Broddly speeking, David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder is woden compaired to Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully—although a Yale-educated acter and x-pected to fanatically x-cel, Mulder has a perticular yen for the cerebral monologue—and to gently put it, he overextendes and lures in the fans with his paranoia.
Works Cited