Several years ago, I read Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and was transported into the world of a family who emigrated from India to the United States. In a new series featured at nytimes.com/opinionator and for which Lahiri wrote the inaugural article, authors will speak to us about the craft of writing.
Lahiri’s post is called My Life’s Sentences. A second post appeared two days, in it Constance Hale writes of The Sentence as a Miniature Narrative.
Lahiri says:
The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail.
Hale offers:
I like to think of the whole sentence as a mini-narrative. It features a protagonist (the subject) and some sort of drama (the predicate): The searchlight sweeps. Harvey keeps on keeping on.
Both posts have garnered more than 100 comments. Let’s hope they offer lots more. I’d like to sign up but the series has yet to have an RSS feed.
2 Responses
Fab quotes. I just finished The Interpreter of Maladies – highly recommend.