Get Free eBook Sample
Stanley Fish is a professor of law at Florida International University in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University. He is the author of fourteen books, most recently Fugitive in Flight and Save the World on Your Own Time. He lives in Andes, New York, and New York City.
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
by Stanley Fish
eBook
$8.74
-
ISBN-13:
9780062006851
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 01/25/2011
- Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 176
- Sales rank: 251,853
- Lexile: 1270L (what's this?)
- File size: 614 KB
What People are Saying About This
Available on NOOK devices and apps
Want a NOOK? Explore Now
8.74
In Stock
“Like a long periodic sentence, this book rumbles along, gathers steam, shifts gears, and packs a wallop.”
—Roy Blount Jr.
“Language lovers will flock to this homage to great writing.”
—Booklist
Outspoken New York Times columnist Stanley Fish offers an entertaining, erudite analysis of language and rhetoric in this delightful celebration of the written word. Drawing on a wide range of great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen and beyond, Fish’s How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a penetrating exploration into the art and craft of sentences.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
-
- How to Read Novels Like a…
- by Thomas C Foster
-
- Reading Like a Writer: A Guide…
- by Francine Prose
-
- How to Read a Book
- by Mortimer J. AdlerCharles Van Doren
-
- Oil!
- by Upton Sinclair
-
- Lie Down in Darkness
- by William Styron
-
- Another Country
- by James Baldwin
-
- Death in Venice and Other…
- by Thomas Mann
-
- The Confessions of Nat Turner:…
- by William Styron
-
- Essays in Humanism
- by Albert Einstein
-
- Notes from Underground
- by Fyodor Dostoevsky
-
- Fairy Tales from the Brothers…
- by Philip Pullman
-
- Dragon Harvest
- by Upton Sinclair
-
- World's End
- by Upton Sinclair
-
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost
- by Rebecca Solnit
-
- How to Read a Novelist
- by John Freeman
Recently Viewed
Yvonne Zipp
…for those who "belong to the tribe of sentence watchers," the fun comes from the examples cited throughout. John Updike, Jane Austen, Elmore Leonard, Herman Melville and Ernest Hemingway are among the greats quoted…—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
A whole book on the lowly sentence? Stanley Fish, America's English Professor, confides that he belongs "to the tribe of sentence watchers," and shares his passion and learning through an array of examples from sentence-making masters, among them Milton, James, Dr. King, Sterne, Swift, Salinger, Elmore Leonard, Conrad, and Gertrude Stein. For Fish, language is logic. He stresses how the sentence, regardless of length—whether declarative or embroidered with qualifiers—is a structure of logical relationships. He discusses the all-important opening sentence and closing sentence, especially as the latter can be isolated from its dramatic context to convey full rhetorical effect. The reader is advised to begin with form; with practice, writers can develop three basics of style (subordinating, additive, satiric) that will allow them to make an emotional impact with their words. In the end, the craft of sentence writing is elevated to the very center of our inner lives. Fish plays the opinion card well, though a piling on of example after example, particularly of long sentences drawn from literature or theology, might leave more experienced sentence-makers to cry, "Enough already!" (Jan. 25)Boston Globe
This splendid little volume describes how the shape of a sentence controls its meaning.Washington Post
The fun comes from the examples cited throughout: John Updike, Jane Austen…all are cited throughout.The Globe and Mail
[A] slender but potent volume. Fish, a distinguished law professor and literary theorist, is the anti-Strunk & White.National Post
Fish is a personable and insightful guide with wide-ranging erudition and a lack of pretension.New Republic
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 often breathtaking, and his analyses of how the masterpieces achieve their effects are acute and compelling.Booklist
Language lovers will flock to this homage to great writing.CBSNews.com
If you love language you’ll find something interesting, if not fascinating, in [How to Write a Sentence].New York magazine
How to Write a Sentence is a compendium of syntactic gems—light reading for geeks.Financial Times
Both deeper and more democratic than The Elements of Style.The New Yorker
Coming up with all-or-nothing arguments is simply what Fish does; and, in a sense, one of his most important contributions to the study of literature is that temperament…Whether people like Fish or not, though, they tend to find him fascinating.New York Observer
[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. Slate
A guided tour through some of the most beautiful, arresting sentences in the English language.Saudi Gazette
How to Write a Sentence is the first step on the journey to the Promised Land of good writing.People
A sentence is, in John Donne’s words, ‘a little world made cunningly,’ writes Fish. He’ll teach you the art.Washington Times
You’d get your money’s worth from the quotations alone…if you give this book the attention it so clearly deserves, you will be well rewarded.The Huffington Post
For both aspiring writer and eager reader, Fish’s insights into sentence construction and care are instructional, even inspirational.BookPage
Stanley Fish just might be America’s most famous professor.New York Magazine
"How to Write a Sentence is a compendium of syntactic gems—light reading for geeks."Maria Popova
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.People Magazine
"A sentence is, in John Donne’s words, ‘a little world made cunningly,’ writes Fish. He’ll teach you the art."Roy Blount Jr.
Like a long periodic sentence, this book rumbles along, gathers steam, shifts gears, and packs a wallop.Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
How to Write a Sentence is a must read for aspiring writers and anyone who wants to deepen their appreciation of literature. If extraordinary sentences are like sports plays, Fish is the Vin Scully of great writing.