Matthew Henry John Bartlett

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Friday 14 May, 02004

by Matthew Bartlett @ 8:02 am

Novel sans verbs [via antipixel]

17 responses to “”

  1. sternum says:

    Hmm. If he doesn’t use verbs does anything actualy ‘happen’, considering verbs are ‘doing words’? Sounds like a complete waste of time, however, I would probably buy it for a conversation piece, which I guess is the idea.

  2. matt says:

    The woman with golden hair in town early Sunday morning. The man asleep under some newspaper. Recognition and recollection. Quiet tears from the passerby. Two unchosen paths.

  3. sternum says:

    Hmm, not bad. Look forward to it arriving in NZ. Or is it already here?

  4. sternum says:

    Oh, that’s right, it’s not in english yet aye

  5. dan says:

    hehe – i found it via jason kottke – these days everything is a meme.

  6. Deb says:

    Sentences without verbs are like pictures.

  7. matt says:

    Yeah – a story, a roll of film. Action implied in the gaps the dissonance between frames. Imagination crucial with no lazy verbs. Story construction a fun challenge in this mode. Implications of ‘is’ everywhere, a defect perhaps.

  8. matt says:

    The verb, a violent imposition of cause-and-effect upon a meaningless universe.

  9. sternum says:

    A story without verbs is fine if you want simply a whole bunch of images. When I read a book, however, I like there to be at least some sort of plot.

  10. sternum says:

    No verbs=clinical and very boring writing.

  11. sternum says:

    Oh, and ‘meaningless universe’…give me strength.

  12. Deb says:

    Heh.

    But now that I’ve read the article, the book doesn’t sound very encouraging.

  13. bryan says:

    whenever language makes a dichotomy, i.e. draws a line down the middle of some property of the “meaningless universe”, it needs to draw another line, this time to show the relation between the disconnected pieces it has broken apart. English, and probably almost every language, has made a division somewhere between what it calls “space” and what it calls “time”. verbs are the relation between space and time. i.e. change

  14. jono says:

    Ha! Check out what Mr Tahler writes about his own book – “My book is a revolution in the history of literature. It is the first book of its kind. It’s daring, modern and it makes me want to kill myself,” – Personally i think thats quite sad

  15. Mark Jones says:

    Ever heard of the book “Ella Minnow Pea” (LMNOP) where the guy who coined the phrase “the quick brown fox…..” was buried on an island and his quote was on the headstone and a letter dropped off so the island stopped using that letter, then another letter fell off and so on, etc… or something like that, published @ 4 years ago. Now I have given you a perfect example of a run-on sentence to use as an example to teach writers what not to do when they write. lol ;+{) MJ

  16. ha, no I haven’t — sounds like a winner though.

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