Joe Stockley was in an expensive sports car and deep trouble. This time, he had really let his mouth and his exotic foreign lover run away with him and it was getting beyond a joke and his immediate circle of friends in the form of rumours and speculation.
As he ran a red light, the conversation back in his mind and away from his troubles, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of rising panic and the soft matte finish of his hand-stitched leather steering wheel. Angelica had been absolutely right and his wife for fifteen years, so why was he running scared, these kind of risks and this deadly gauntlet of illicit entanglements?
You are cracking me up with this stuff!
ReplyDeleteI love it!
Holy cow, that was fantastically painful to read. I love it.
ReplyDeleteHaha! I was just learning about syllepsis in my Writing and Rhetoric Program. Awesome stuff, it never fails to make me laugh.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what syllepsis is and wet pants.
ReplyDeleteNot syllepsis but still worthy of mention: "He was a seaman (sic) soaked tissue in the landfill of society."
ReplyDeleteVery nice! Do you know 'Madeira, M'Dear' by Flanders and Swann? Lyrics here.
ReplyDeleteIt's got three lovely examples:
"And he said as he hastened to put out the cat,
The wine, his cigar and the lamps";
"She lowered her standards by raising her glass,
Her courage, her eyes and his hopes."
"When he asked "what in Heaven?" she made no reply,
Up her mind, and a dash for the door."
Hilarious!
ReplyDelete@pj I think the first example is indeed lovely but I find the third to be awkward ("Up her mind" doesn't work for me). However, I think the line, "She lowered her standards by raising her glass" is nothing short of brilliant.
What is syllepsis and your point?
ReplyDeleteP.S. -- Feel free to mine my own site for material. I am sure you will find both many examples of bad writing and it very amusing.
ReplyDeleteepic. so great. :D
ReplyDelete@Ronald, I believe the third verse makes sense if taken thus:
ReplyDeleteShe made no reply.
She made up her mind.
She made a dash for the door.
Flanders and Swann are, indeed, brilliant.
I love this sOoO much. Oh, and hi reddit!
ReplyDeleteThe Up her mind part was my favorite, @Ronald
ReplyDelete'up her mind' is *supposed* to be awkward. It's syllepsis, it's awkward by deinition - and the added awkwardness of 'up her mind' is a feature, not a bug.
ReplyDeleteLearn about syllepsis, then refuse to stop employing it or your copy editor.
ReplyDeleteYou really must write badly well on Twitter if you aren't already.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't, but I am now.
ReplyDeletehttp://twitter.com/writebadlywell
Never let it be said that I don't do what I'm told by strangers on the internet.
This blog makes me laugh and the most delightful writing course ever.
ReplyDeleteSteve held the courthouse door, his breath, and onto some sliver of hope as Miranda breezed through. Three months had passed since he'd finally driven her crazy and to the bus station where he'd waved goodbye and all rights to her as his own.
I like that Laurie. Laurie's good.
ReplyDelete@Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI think Ronald's point is that in
She made no reply.
She made up her mind.
She made a dash for the door.
the middle sentence has a different verb from the first and last ('made up' vs 'made'). This presumably is deliberately done for the awkward effect, but at the break-neck speed of the recording it took me a few years to realize that this verse really had a matching three-part syllepsis.
"made ... up her mind" it has a sort of ogden nash flavor to it and me--istr he was fond of splitting phrasal verbs, though usually to achieve a rhyme, rather than for parallelism.
ReplyDeleteI've been enjoying all your posts, but this one is absolutely brilliant!
ReplyDelete@Laurie, the problem is that the last "waved" should be
ReplyDeletehe'd waved goodbye
he'd WAIVED all rights to her as his own.
I laughed at this article and all the numerous perversions of the English language here on your epic blog. The computer screen lit my keyboard and my smile, as I avoided my homework and the horror of a world without laughter.
ReplyDeleteJoel's refusal to use the serial comma is the cherry atop this disaster of a passage.
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