The Year in Great Sentences (SLBrooklynMagazine)

December 18, 2014 8:28 PM

“My past is littered with the bones of men who were foolish enough to think I was someone they could sleep on.”
posted by mr. digits (11 comments total)

Spoiler, the best one is in the FPP, everybody go home. It does not get better.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 8:36 PM on December 18, 2014 [9 favorites]

The one from Ask Polly is one long assed sentence, but very good in its genre.

Lana anyday.

Not too much great. There was some very good writing in the Helen of Troy thread.
posted by Oyéah at 9:17 PM on December 18, 2014

That line is Homeric in magnitude.
posted by Sphinx at 11:07 PM on December 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hadn't heard of this guy (group?) before but the song with, "No family is safe when I sashay," is Queen by Perfume Genius and that's a pretty genius line in the context of that song.
posted by cmoj at 11:38 PM on December 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sasha’s birthday fell on a Wednesday, and though her parents gave her a present, its string and paper meant to be torn away at once, almost ten days have passed and still she has not opened it.

Sasha’s birthday fell on a Wednesday, and though her parents gave her a present, it is still wrapped two Saturdays later.
posted by Segundus at 12:01 AM on December 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

"...Whitman's side of the river..." Does deserve a call-out.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:49 AM on December 19, 2014

cmoj: "I hadn't heard of this guy (group?) before but the song with, "No family is safe when I sashay," is Queen by Perfume Genius and that's a pretty genius line in the context of that song."

As is "Casing the barracks for an ass to break and harness into the fold/marry". Especially the way the word "marry" is almost delivered with a hiss of contempt...
posted by jokeefe at 7:39 AM on December 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I liked most of them, but:

“Bundled debt, trace amounts of antidepressants in the municipal water, the vast arterial network of traffic, changing weather patterns of increasing severity—whenever I looked at lower Manhattan from Whitman’s side of the river I resolved to become one of the artists who momentarily made bad forms of collectivity figures of its possibility, a proprioceptive flicker in advance of the communal body.”

Poseur, please.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:45 AM on December 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Rebekah Frumkin's The Abyss is worth getting to the end. She's one of the few new/young writers that I am interested in. If you are hesitating the line selected doesn't fully capture the feel of that piece.

Some of her other work has a more pronounced DF Wallace style with the footnotes etc. and this maintains some of DFW's over awereness- to good effect.
posted by zenon at 6:52 PM on December 19, 2014

Could someone explain the titular quotation? The Google says "sleep on it" is an expression for taking time to think things over before committing to a big decision, usually a big-ticket purchase, but I don't quite know how to put this together.
posted by d. z. wang at 8:48 PM on December 19, 2014

"Sleep on" as in overlook/ignore. Urban Dictionary.
posted by Georgina at 3:57 AM on December 20, 2014