How to Write a Sentence - And How to Read One by Stanley Fish (US edition, paperback) - 9780061840531

New York Times Bestseller“Both deeper and more democratic than The Elements of Style” —Adam Haslett, Financial Times“A guided tour through some of the most beautiful, arresting sentences in the English language.” —SlateIn this entertaining and erudite gem, world-class professor and New York Times columnist Stanley Fish offers both sentence craft and sentence pleasure, skills invaluable to any writer (or reader). Like a seasoned sportscaster, Fish marvels at the adeptness of finely crafted sentences and breaks them down into digestible morsels, giving readers an instant play-by-play. Drawing on a wide range of great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works. It is a book that will stand the test of time.Some appreciate fine art; others appreciate fine wines. Stanley Fish appreciates fine sentences. The New York Times columnist and world-class professor has long been an aficionado of language. Like a seasoned sportscaster, Fish marvels at the adeptness of finely crafted sentences and breaks them down into digestible morsels, giving readers an instant play-by-play. In this entertaining and erudite gem, Fish offers both sentence craft and sentence pleasure, skills invaluable to any writer (or reader). How to Write a Sentence is both a spirited love letter to the written word and a key to understanding how great writing works; it is a book that will stand the test of time.“Both deeper and more democratic than The Elements of Style.” — Financial Times“A guided tour through some of the most beautiful, arresting sentences in the English language.” — Slate“[Fish] shares his connoisseurship of the elegant sentence.” — The New Yorker“Stanley Fish just might be America’s most famous professor.” — BookPage“How to Write a Sentence is a compendium of syntactic gems—light reading for geeks.” — New York magazine“How to Write a Sentence isn’t merely a prescriptive guide to the craft of writing but a rich and layered exploration of language as an evolving cultural organism. It belongs not on the shelf of your home library but in your brain’s most deep-seated amphibian sensemaking underbelly.” — Maria Popova, Brain Pickings“[Fish’s] approach is genially experiential—a lifelong reader’s engagement whose amatory enthusiasm is an attempt to overthrow Strunk & White’s infamous insistences on grammar by rote.” — New York Observer“In this small feast of a book Stanley Fish displays his love of the English sentence. His connoisseurship is broad and deep, his examples are