Monday, November 11, 2013

Great Model Sentence from Jennifer Egan

From “A Visit from the Goon Squad” (2010) by Jennifer Egan

Consider:
She lay with her body tensed, claiming the couch, her spot in this room, her view of the window and walls, the faint hum that was always there when she listened, and these minutes of Coz’s time: another, then another, then one more.

Discuss.
1.       Describe this sentence.  How is it constructed?  What do you note about the sentence?
2.       This sentence makes syntactic and semantic sense if it ends at the first comma.  What do the additional clauses add to the meaning and effectiveness of the sentence?

Apply.

Rewrite Egan’s sentence, matching it phrase for phrase, punctuation mark by punctuation mark.

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