"Styles are elected," he says. Kenner's own style is elected, invented, compounded, found. As much made to the purpose as an oyster knife. The colon epitomizes it. I, who live or die by the colon, who have been publicly reprimanded for my colons in a magazine of several million readers. I would never dare use, until my first paragraph above, two in one sentence. Kenner will use four at a time; sentences that look like railroad flats. It's an equal sign, shorthand for "like" or "as." The colon marks a style that can encompass "head or tail" and "lucubrations" in the same phrase. A style that marries sophisticated constructions with the elbow-nudge fragment. All spoken in an unannounced second person, to you, familiarly. Colloquial, classical; magisterial, intimate; pointed, fun: a new thing in criticism.
From: "Kenner's Code," D. Keith Mano, National Review, 5/23/1975, Vol. 27 Issue 19, p568-569. A review of the book A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers by Hugh Kenner.
D. Keith Mano on Hugh Kenner:
ReplyDelete"Styles are elected," he says. Kenner's
own style is elected, invented,
compounded, found. As much made to
the purpose as an oyster knife. The
colon epitomizes it. I, who live or die
by the colon, who have been publicly
reprimanded for my colons in a magazine
of several million readers. I
would never dare use, until my first
paragraph above, two in one sentence.
Kenner will use four at a time; sentences
that look like railroad flats. It's
an equal sign, shorthand for "like" or
"as." The colon marks a style that can
encompass "head or tail" and "lucubrations"
in the same phrase. A style
that marries sophisticated constructions
with the elbow-nudge fragment.
All spoken in an unannounced second
person, to you, familiarly. Colloquial,
classical; magisterial, intimate; pointed,
fun: a new thing in criticism.
From: "Kenner's Code," D. Keith Mano, National Review, 5/23/1975, Vol. 27 Issue 19, p568-569. A review of the book A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers by Hugh Kenner.