Suppose a Sentence [Paperback]

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 Sentence, 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 Essayism, 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.“Marvelous. . . . [Dillon] is no slouch himself at crafting a phrase. . . . The product of decades of close reading, Suppose a Sentence is eclectic yet tightly shaped. Mr. Dillon has a taste for the more eccentric prose stylists, and lights with delight upon the likes of John Ruskin, who ‘insisted he knew perfectly well if, or when, he had lost his mind.’ His essay on Thomas De Quincey is a small masterpiece. . . . Mr. Dillon’s book is a record of successive enrapturings.” —John Banville, The Wall Street Journal

“[A] record of appreciation, a rare treasure in an age that rewards bashing. . . . Dillon’s affinities prove eclectic and unexpected. He knows some authors, among them Roland Barthes, exhaustively. Others, like the jazz critic Whitney Balliett, he admits he has just discovered. He admires James Baldwin, Maeve Brennan and Annie Dillard. Best of all, he loveslóô