A captivating meditation on the power of the sentence by the author of
Essayism
, a 2018
New Yorker
book of the year
.
In
Suppose a Sentenc
e, Brian Dillon, whom John Banville has called “a literary flâneur in the tradition of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin,” has written a sequel of sorts to
, turning his attention to the oblique and complex pleasures of the sentence. A series of essays prompted by a single sentence—from Shakespeare to James Baldwin, John Ruskin to Joan Didion—this new book explores style, voice, and language, along with the subjectivity of reading. Both an exercise in practical criticism and a set of experiments or challenges,
Suppose a Sentence
is a polemical and personal reflection on the art of the sentence in literature.