For the Love of Sentences
I just can't resist this from Frank Bruni of the NYT
Every time I see this portion of Frank Bruni’s column in the NYT, I’m thrilled. The sentences selected for inclusion are the height of writing brilliance.
He usually includes a section about his dog Regan which I also find irresistible. If you enjoy these as much as I do, I urge you to read his column in the NYT. It’s more about life and making sense of the world around us than politics. Enjoy!
For the Love of Sentences
Mark Peterson for The New York Times
Ah, the travails of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In The Times, Bret Stephens questioned “how McCarthy can manage a Republican circus in which Donald Trump is the ringmaster, Matt Gaetz cracks the whip, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is in charge of the clowns.” Bret also wrote that if McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry “were any more premature, it would be a teenage boy.” (Thanks to Rosemary A. Fletcher-Jones of New Milton, England, and Michael Melius of Hermosa, S.D., among many others, for singling out Bret’s descriptions.)
In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank added: “McCarthy, whose main strength as a leader has always been his steadfast devotion to self-preservation, recognized that he was about to get trampled by the impeachment parade. So he stepped out in front of it and pretended to be the drum major.” (Arlyne Willcox, Manhasset, N.Y., and Mike McNeely, Washington, D.C.)
In USA Today, Rex Huppke wondered at the fierceness of many conservatives’ resistance to a certain accessory — and emblem — of self-protection: “It’s nearly autumn, and that means football, pumpkin spice everything and the new liberal tradition of hanging a KN95 mask on the front door to ward off Republicans.” He later jested that in addition to the front-door mask, “I might sprinkle a little hand sanitizer on the welcome mat for good measure. You can’t be too careful these days.” (Mary Ellen Scribner, Austin, Texas)
In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Robert Mason Lee recalled the verbal flourishes of Peter C. Newman, a journalist who recently died: “Rather than block a metaphor, he would baste it in a Scheherazade of purple sauce, turning it on a spit until it emerged, plump and dripping in word fat, to be enjoyed time and again.” (Lesley Barsky, Toronto)
The Economist assessed Britain’s official “risk register” of looming threats to society, which seemed “an eccentric bureaucratic hobby” at its inception in 2008. “Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine; A.I. has threatened to develop godlike intelligence with Old Testament consequences; and the pandemic has killed 25 million people worldwide,” The Economist wrote. “Toby Ord, a philosopher at Oxford, puts the odds of humanity suffering some sort of existential catastrophe within the next century at about one in six. The end, if not yet nigh, feels rather nigher than before.” (Ian Proud, Lewisburg, Pa.)
Returning to The Times: Bill Carter explored the paradox of television talk shows like Jimmy Fallon’s. “On air, the fun is infectious. Off air, the ambience can be like the hold of a Roman galley: Everybody’s rowing, but the flogging can get unpleasant,” he wrote. (Molly Mabe, Virginia Beach, Va., and Daniel Zadunaisky, Mexico City, among others)
Also in The Times, Rowan Ricardo Phillips found an original way to say that it rained: “If you live in New York, you noticed a drop in the temperature this past week; the stifling heat and haze of high-pressure systems passed, and clouds that had loitered for days finally, and rather theatrically, drained themselves and moved on.” (Suzanne Samson, Boonton, N.J.)
Ellen Barry evoked the lingering pain of children whose father died in a plane crash in July 1973. “That summer was a perforated line, separating life with their father from life without him: Tear here.” (Judy Distler, Teaneck, N.J.)
And Tom Friedman cut to the chase: “What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion in a class of its own for overreach, mendacity, immorality and incompetence, all wrapped in a farrago of lies. What he is doing is evil.” Tom went on to characterize Putin’s outreach to North Korea as “the biggest bank in town having to ask the local pawnshop for a loan.” (Dan Conti, Concord, Mass., and Mike Silk, Laguna Woods, Calif., among others)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.