Suppose a Sentence is a critical and personal reflection on the art of the sentence in literature. It is both an experiment in the attentive form of the essay - asking what happens, and where one might wander, when as readers and writers we pay minute attention to the language before us - and a polemic for certain kinds of experiment in prose. In a series of essays, each taking a single sentence as its starting point, the book explores style, voice and context. But it also uses its subjects -from George Eliot to Joan Didion, John Donne to Annie Dillard, Anne Carson to Rachel Cusk - to ask what the sentence is today and what it might become next.
With this brilliant sequel of sorts to his acclaimed Essayism, Brian Dillon confirms he is one of the very best essayists at work today.
Suppose a Sentence is a critical and personal reflection on the art of the sentence in literature. It is both an experiment in the attentive form of the essay - asking what happens, and where one might wander, when as readers and writers we pay minute attention to the language before us - and a polemic for certain kinds of experiment in prose. In a series of essays, each taking a single sentence as its starting point, the book explores style, voice and context. But it also uses its subjects -from George Eliot to Joan Didion, John Donne to Annie Dillard, Anne Carson to Rachel Cusk - to ask what the sentence is today and what it might become next.
With this brilliant sequel of sorts to his acclaimed Essayism, Brian Dillon confirms he is one of the very best essayists at work today.
Brian Dillon is a freelance writer and critic. He is the editor of Ruins (Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2011) and author of The Great Explosion (Penguin, 2015), Objects in This Mirror (Sternberg Press, 2014), I Am Sitting in a Room (Cabinet, 2011), Sanctuary (Sternberg Press, 2011), Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (Penguin, 2009), which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and In the Dark Room (Penguin, 2005) which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. Dillon writes regularly on art, books and culture for such publications as the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the IrishTimes, Artforum and frieze. He is Tutor in Critical Writing at the Royal College of Art and UK editor of Cabinet, a quarterly of art and culture based in New York.
‘Each chapter focuses on a sentence chosen not for its historical
importance, nor for its connection to the book’s other essays, but
simply out of love. As Dillon puts it, his chief criterion is a
sense of “affinity.” What emerges is a record of appreciation, a
rare treasure in an age that rewards bashing.’
— Becca Rothfeld, New York Times
‘Essayist and critic Brian Dillon is in thrall to sentences. For a
quarter of a century, he tells us in his marvelous new book, he has
been collecting them, in “the back pages of whatever notebook I
happen to be using,” ... The product of decades of close reading,
Suppose a Sentence is eclectic yet tightly shaped. Mr. Dillon has a
taste for the more eccentric prose stylists, and lights with
delight upon the likes of John Ruskin ... His essay on Thomas De
Quincey is a small masterpiece ... The best and certainly most
beautiful piece in the book is on Roland Barthes, “the patron saint
of my sentences” without whom “I would never have written a
word.” It is easy to understand what Mr. Dillon means when he
speaks of Barthes, one of whose books is called A Lover’s
Discourse, as “the most seductive writer I know,” for Mr. Dillon’s
own book is a record of successive enrapturings.’
— John Banville, Wall Street Journal
‘Dillon, with his Suppose a Sentence, a collection of
reflections on the nature of the sentence, made me wonder why any
of the rest of us bother trying to write non-fiction.’
— Ian Sansom, TLS
‘The book has a lot of what I can only call pleasure—of the kind
that I imagine athletes or dancers experience when they are doing
what they do, which is then communicated to those watching them do
it. I share with Dillon some misgivings about general theories and
overarching ideas, but in thinking about the writing I enjoy most,
this quality feels like the one constant: that the author takes
some pleasure in using these muscles and finding them capable of
what they are asked. That delight is evident both in the sentences
Dillon looks at and in those he writes himself.’
— Hasan Altaf, Paris Review
‘Reducing great writers and works to a single sentence is a
provocative act, but one that in an age of 280-character opinions
does not feel inappropriate. Used as we are to monosyllabic
messaging and governance by tweet, it is an important reminder of
the potential beauty, rather than mere convenience, that can be
conjured in concision.[...] Suppose a Sentence is an absorbing
defence of literary originality and interpretation, inviting us not
just to take words as they first appear but to let them abstract
themselves before our very eyes.’
— Chris Allnut, Financial Times
‘Taking as his starting point a sentence that has intrigued him for
years or, in some cases, come into his ken more recently, Brian
Dillon in Suppose a Sentence ranges through the centuries exploring
the associations of what he observes and discovers about his object
of study and its writer, through biographical anecdote, linguistic
speculation, and a look at related writings. This rich and various
collection resembles a beguiling, inspiriting conversation with a
personable and wry intelligence who keeps you happily up late,
incites you to note some follow-up reading, and opens your eyes
further to the multifarious syntactical and emotional capacities of
even a few joined words of English. Enjoyable and thought-provoking
reading!’
— Lydia Davis, author of Can’t and Won’t
‘Dillon has brilliantly reinvented the commonplace book in this
witty, erudite, and addictively readable guide to the sentences
that have stayed with him over the years.’
— Jenny Offill, author of Weather
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