This Wonderful Pop Liebespaare

These two wonderful people who had recently times to smooch in New York. Dear reader will have followed my advice and have visited Dean & Deluca, a sensational gourmet shop. If there is something to eat, there is at Dean & Deluca. Alone, the store offers daily bread fresh from the oven 400 different kinds of bread and that's just the only bread stand. I was once in New York and spent six hours this store fiddling these breadchoices, etc. The wonderful loves loaded then there is also a Paulsen Memorial minute and what brought me! These are some potholder. These are not just potholder, which are potholders from Dean & Deluca. They are made ​​of leather pigskins! They look great! They feel incredibly good or rather perfect. I'll never use. I will most times to wave my dinner guests so, touch is not. These are my potholder! When I visited days ago Dean & Deluca, not only the selection of delicacies was remarkable, it was probably so in the fourth hour of my stay when I suddenly noticed YOU. An incredible woman! She stood at the jam shelf and studied the glasses, or what we call jars. The wild black tresses of her hair she blew herself while every ten seconds from the face. High cheeks, almond eyes, black eyeliner, full lips, black lipstick. She was wearing a Ramones T-shirt that seemed everywhere much too small, plus a short suede skirt of her long brown legs pointed out very nice. The tiny feet were a touch of the straps snaked up to the velvet knee. I was getting thrilled. Then bent her guy around the corner. Oh Gosh! A long, stringy misery of the type. With sunken cheeks and tired hanging spaghetti hair had ever seen no more shampoo, his T-shirt decorated for the more faded and moth damage. His skinny legs encased in tight leather pants terrible that held an equally terrible studded belt at the acute pelvic bone. Now the two making out even extensively, I almost could not see out my struggle! Hide all for I am swine comes as a wreck before such a pearl? Okay, so a lot of imagination you could keep the type to be good, that he completely removed, the idolized by me Iggy Pop was similar, but otherwise, I do not know. It all happened very quickly. While I was still staring at the lovers hypnotized, the long misery of the poor woman's dream dissolved, grabbed a glass of lemon curd from the shelf and then noticed me. I the boldly staring, Central Europe Stuffed Shirt stood as if nailed in jam aisle. The guy looked me right in the eyes, I aghast into his scarred face. "Ohhh, ah, ah," I stammered, "Mr., uh, Pop, uh, I, uh..." "How you're doin' man." said Iggy Pop, there was a smile of his girlfriend, then the two disappeared without any further word in the cheese department. "Very good, thank you." I said softly to jam shelf. Family... Pop!!!

Lauro Benavides, Kolob, Utah, April 2015.

It is not entirely clear what he will do when he has completed his project, but Lauro is certain that, for now, he must do what Bolaño’s nameless character in Distant Star finally did: he will embark on a self-imposed two-step apprenticeship of seclusion and reading. In Kolob — or, really, outside it, in the most remote place he can reasonably be — seclusion is not difficult, but books are a challenge. Books are heavy, fragile, irresistible to rodents, prone to mildew, and there is no nearby place to buy them. Also, Lauro has very little money, because he is a wetback and he walked out of Mexico three years ago penniless and, as the gringos would whine, without recourse. But he has worked hard at all the menial jobs in Kolob: washing dishes at the Be Merry; cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking firewood for Gladys, bless her heart, and giving her the most painful Spanish lessons —had he been that slow with English? No, probably not—; moving whatever handlines that ox Kade doesn’t have time to move; branding for Ferral; bucking bales for Diamond, and fixing their fragile and complicated swather; clearing ditches for the Christiansens; up early to collect eggs for Rosy, and late to bed, such as it is, alone, after getting old Vera Lyman’s woodstove stoked for the night. And so, dashing all day every day on his bicycle from job to job, from one end of the valley to the other, all the time avoiding that pinche Sheriff —truly a small-town Carlos Weider, with his buzzcut and his mustache and his .45 automatic and his wall-like coptalk designed to hide the violence in his heart—he has, by now, amassed almost $3,000, and he is, now, right now, with Fox in Sandman’s sweet rig on their way to Salt Lake City to get books. Many books. He has the money in his pockets and he is studying his list, making a few changes, but content with what he believes will take him a year to read out there in the desert away from all the people. He has called ahead to the local, independent bookstore to special-order the books in Spanish, and, as it turns out, almost everything he wants in English, too, for his list transcends the current literary fiction the bookstore carries, and runs to the Boom, and the High Moderns, and to the classics, mostly titles never in stock in cities as small as Salt Lake. Cervantes, in Spanish, of course, and in English, and Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations, which is quite expensive; several Bolaños; Cortazar; Borges; Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, which had only just reached Mexico by the time of Lauro’s exile; Patrick Leigh Fermor; and the Faulkners he dreads but which he will push through with the English skills he’s developed so assiduously these last 1,000 nights in Kolob. He has opted to avoid theory. He will take the books raw. It is crucial to the project that he submit to the books unassisted. The nameless character in Distant Star had to “commune with the master works”: Bolaño had him submit to the reading methods of one Raoul Delorme —Lauro is not sure there ever was a Delorme, or if Bolaño invented the French ex-Legionnaire— who had his band of “barbaric writers” perform certain, shall we say “biological”, acts to —or with— the great books: one had to defecate on the pages of Stendhal, blow one’s nose on Hugo, masturbate over Gautier, and in many other ways deface or degrade the great books. Partly because of how hard Lauro has worked for these books, but mostly because he believes Bolaño meant us to understand these acts of degradation as metaphorical, Lauro has chosen not to shit, sneeze, ejaculate, vomit, bleed, or urinate on them, but he has committed fully, with all his longing and certainty, to read them all, with complete concentration, until he understands. He will haul his $3,000 stack of books deep into the desert, into the necessary seclusion, and he will read every word, pen in hand, for a year. He will deface them only with underlinings and marginalia. He will do this in defiance of Mexico, too weak to defend him and his family from the thugs; and he will do this in defiance of the United States of America, too strong and smug to honor his learning and his exquisite sensitivity. He fears it is perhaps a grand conceit, but he will do this not just for himself, but for poor disenfranchised people everywhere. He will do it to subvert the empire. He will emerge after this seclusion with a new wisdom. Bolaño — or Delorme, who knows?— called it ""real familiarity" with and "real assimilation" of" literature.

And then, perhaps, he will write. This is a vague notion, like a small puff of cloud on the very horizon of his future, but he feels excitement, as though the cloud were charged with electricity, charging more all the time, anticipating an ecstasy of lightning.

But for now that excitement is faint. He can barely find it in himself buried in all the more pressing worries. Finding food will require many hours, and drought this coming summer could end the project entirely. And there is the possibility that his other big project in the desert will be discovered, that someone will find him out there up to his neck in the verdant evidence. And the pleasure of contemplating a year of uninterrupted reading is tainted by the memory he can’t escape, that night now three years gone when the Zetas came and burned them out. Most of these books he is now on his way to buy he has owned before, in his old life, and all that was taken, so he is not just stepping into a future of new understanding. He is also going back to the ruins of the family house outside Querétaro to pick through the crumbled adobes to find some remnant of his old life. He is going to read his way back to his birthright.

From the Journal of Ezra Benson, 4th Period Language Arts, Youngville High School, Youngville, Utah

9/1/15                  I keep my face hard. I got no fear at school. Thats just who I am. Youngville HS I am on the wrestling and football team I play center offensive and defensive. The wall at the gym entrance we hang out at, we are last in class right at the bell! There are the cheerleader girls too at the same wall this is also where the visiting teams have to walk under the Spirit Banner SUX 4 THEM!! LOL. The whole team is LDS but WE “R” HARD the cheerleader girls are all LDS but there is this one Lora who her father is a Ranger he is Federal Government she is like half indian you can see on game day all the cheerleader girls wear their red Skirt and their legs lined up on the wall are all like White White White White Brown and its like Whats wrong with this picture?! HA! She is hot but its like can you get any browner??? Stop tanning already bitch!

9/2/15                  Today is Home Game day I got hit at practice Spence helmeted me in the Pec it is bruised bad like it is black I saw it in the mirror I am skipping gym shower today if Coach finds out I am Bruised bad he will Bench me and then who will cover Bryce? Tell me that! He is the QB he is a skinny PUNK ass he will get killed if I get Benched I am not letting team know about this Bruise I am HARD I am going to PLAY THRU THE PAIN!!!!

9/3/15                  MRS. Schow said write in this Journal every day she will not read it only check the pages to prove if we did our writing every day all year she just flips thru it and puts a stamp on every week but if I lose this Journal then someone will read it Kids @ Youngville HS or my Mom and Dad be like EZRA T. BENSON YOU PUSSY! I dont write nothing they can yank my chain about if you are reading this YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE then you know Ez Benson is HARD who is your Daddy?!?! You know Ez Benson is HA!!!!!

I sat across from Kandace this morning in the Kolob school van she talked to me she is not a cheerleader she is quiet at School but she is the prettiest girl in the School. On Game Day’s the van stays late till after the Game and so Kandace sits under the bleachers + does her homework she is a “Diligent” student which I Respect that. I talked to her on the van ride I said Why are you always doing homework?!! And she was like “I dont want to spend my Whole Life in Kolob there is nothing to do here” that is why she memorizes vocab she said in Kolob we have no “sophisticated” vocab its all cows this and hay that and trucks anyway That much is true! Well she said if you want to get somewhere in life you need to know all the words she has like 500 flash cards she is going to take the PSAT she gets good grades now but she used to get all F’s she is going to move somewhere and go to College. My guidance counselor says College but I SUCK at grades it is BORING I hate school I just go for sports coach says “No Class Your Benched” and so I go to class. I will not be BENCHED in my LIFE! Coach says PLAY HARD GIVE IT YOUR ALL 110% if you want to play at the Top Level! I want to play at the Top Level maybe that is College I hope I grow my Dad is 6 foot 4 280 pounds he is big enough for PRO BALL I am 5 foot 11 190 but only 16 I am still growing I am the heaviest on the team I bench 260 I AM STRONG I lift every School day and the BULK CYCLE bulking up to get BIG coach said the recruiter from SUU and the one from the “Y” know all the Top playaz in the State he said do your lift’s double your squat’s Hit Hard Hit Fair its all about RESPECT the other team will RESPECT you if you Play Hard + Get Big I will be as tall as my Dad before College I pray every night about this. Girls want to be small Boys want to be big all of us want to be Tall Kandace is like 5 foot 9. On the Kolob van we talked about my Mom is driving us over to Cedar City to buy clothes my Mom said mine are wore out Handy said Kandace’s Skirt is too short. Its not too short for me LOL!!!

If this Journal ever gets stole the Truth will be known Kandace Has The Hottest Body She Is So Hot dayum girl I know her Mom does not take her shopping for new clothe’s My secret is I am glad so she can go with me thats like 6 hours in the car over to Cedar and back of course with my Mom there I will not have a chance to put the “Moves” on Kandace LOL! If you are reading this you can SUCK IT.

9/6/15                  Hay cutting is as soon as it dries we had rain I AM SO SICK of hay driving that Swather would not be so bad but we have the Old School rusty old Massey I hate that piece of junk driving it back and forth all day sneezing and itching my Dad wants the windrows straight to not miss any Hay is expensive this year “NO HAY NO TRUCK” he always says he said I can have the pickup soon as he can buy a new one then I can drive Kandace to School NO MORE RIDES ON THE ****ING VAN!!!

9/7/15                  YOUNGVILLE 21 BITTER SPRING 14!!!! SUCK IT YOU FAGS! I got 2 sacks Dad took me to get a burger he said “That was fine playing son you played hard you saw the opening and you executed” Halftime and post Game I got hugs from the cheerleaders. When I hit Shitter Spring’s QB Tyson Callister I hit him so hard he just lay there. Coach came out and he was all “Take A Knee” we took a Knee he is always like “No Smiling No Talking Show Your Respect For The Downed Soldier give him an applause when he get’s up be SPORTSMANLIKE”. You keep your face hard kneel and hold your helmet. Last year I hit this one kid we hit helmets he was pass blocking I was running hard for the Sack when we hit helmets there was this sound I hate it was like a “subtle” sound that goes way into my left ear so now when I hear a whisper or any soft speaking such as a prayer or papers in the church microphone or anybody making soft talking on my left ear or ESPECIALLY soup sounds or chewing with your mouth open I GET ENRAGED like it sets me OFF hearing this “subtle” stuff. I know this is weird I think my ear got broke inside when we hit helmets. No way am I telling anybody I would get Benched. So I sat next to Kandace today at lunch and she got a Mountain Dew and the pull tab when she pulled it and the fizz of the pop popping out and her sucking on it or “SLURPING” I expected would make me INSANE ANGRY so I was forcing myself to be all cool and like not show her how these sounds make me go like PSYCHO and so when she pulled the pull tab and there was that like SHKRRRRCKPOP sound I was totally in CONTROL DISCIPLINE!!!! AND IT DID NOT MAKE ME ENRAGED instead it made me SEXUALLY AROUSED! it was like the most SEXUAL thing I ever heard in my Left Ear a.k.a. Horny as Frik!!! I was like 0-60 in 1 point zer0 seconds! So I think I have a hardwire from my left ear to my Dick from that one kid helmeting me. Now if I lose this Journal I will have to move to another country! LOL! First time I knew about my Left Ear was I was giving my little brother Ephraim a titty twister in church and my Mom whispered in my Ear to stop it and her whisper set me off like a Mad Dog I punched the Hymnal holder thing so hard it broke off. My Dad is the Bishop he was up on the stand my Mom smaked me my Dad came down his hand goes all the way around my Bicep he is Huge he made me sit in the truck the rest of Sacrament Meeting. I had my iPod I rocked out for a minute but the sounds in the Earbuds in my Left Ear made me go BERZERK again now I can’t hear chewing or “slurping” or whispering in that ****ed up Ear but I go apeshit except I guess Kandace and when she makes one of those sounds in my Left Ear I get AROUSED AS FRIK. My own noises I have to control too I have to swallow my food and NOT CHEW IT I practice on myself chewing and sucking and it helps but like brushing my teeth on the left makes this pressing in my chest on my heart I think I will have a Heart Attack. Loud noises help if I go shooting the loud sound of the rifle if I take my left earplug out cures the RAGE for like two days it is a relief I wish I could go deaf in my Left Ear I never sit with a person to my left EXCEPT KANDACE if she whispered in my Left Ear it would be like “Uh, We Need To Get Married” you turned me on that much! In my Left Ear. if my Mom whispers in my Left Ear again I may not be able to Control myself the RAGE is ****ing serious Coach says DISCIPLINE I am getting that tattooed on my wrist when I get home from my mission but I have ZERO CONTROL over my Rage response to any soft sounds in my Left Ear.

The Boy Ezra Taft Benson Online as SpecOpsUTAH, March 22, 2015

MilitiaCentral.com

Category: Reloading

Thread: AR-15 loads

Started 07-11-2015 by VAgunsmith, MilitiaCentral Senior Moderator

Replies: 65          Views: 312          Last post by: SpecOpsUTAH

Post:

NewbySniper Im goin bet your ammo SUX i cant believe the retards that post here this is the AR15 forum you should know at least what a AR is you retard and this is the reloading page it is for RELOADING POSTS YOU DUSHBAG it is for .223 reloads that is the SAME AS 5.56 NATO for all intensive purposes everyone on this string should know at least that much

By: SpecOpsUTAH 03-21-2015, 8:50 PM

Lifetime posts: 1,866

Les Baer .308 Semi-Auto Sniper with NightForce scope!!!

Post:

Chill SpecOps, I’m just asking. I’m a Newby you can see that by my Username. I just have a question isn’t this a good place for questions? I mean, this Forum is called Reloading/AR-15 loads, and my question is about learning how to reload for the AR-15 I plan to get.

By: NewbySniper 03-21-2015, 8:55 PM

Lifetime posts: 6

Post:

NewbySniper I lose my temper when people come on here that don’t know anything this is a expert forum you dont even own a AR!!!! I dont know about you but it is NOT OK for some cubscout come on here to ask about reloading IT IS DANGEROUS!!! AND PLUS YOU MAKE SERIOUS EXPERT SHOOTERS LOOK LIKE A FOOL COMING ON HERE WITH BASIC QUESTION I KNEW THE ANSWER OF WHEN I WAS A KID!!!!!!

By: SpecOpsUTAH, 03-21-2015, 8:56 PM

Lifetime posts: 1,867

Les Baer .308 Semi-Auto Sniper with NightForce scope!!!

Post:

Ok SpecOps how about you don’t YELL at me in all Caps and tell me where is a good forum for my questions about .223 AR as I am such a “RETARD”.

By: NewbySniper 03-21-2015, 9:01 PM

Lifetime posts: 7

Post:

NewbySniper how about you go to like Wikipedia and search for .223 and read the basic FACTS on their before you come on a expert forum wasting our time

By: SpecOpsUTAH 03-21-2015, 9:02 PM

Lifetime posts: 1,868

Les Baer .308 Semi-Auto Sniper with NightForce scope!!!

Post:

SpecOps: I’m going to have to ask you to take it down a notch and show some respect to all our guests on here. This is no place for shaming and yelling. Please refer to our Guidelines if you have any questions about forum etiquette.

NewbySniper: I suggest you check with a local shooting range to see if you can get professional instruction on the AR-15 before you purchase. Reloading requires lots of technical knowledge and expensive specialized tools, and is generally not performed by beginners, but you are welcome to read this forum. I recommend you start with “Reloading for Centerfire Rifles”, by Davis McCarthy.

By: VAgunsmith, MilitiaCentral Senior Moderator 03-21-2015, 9:11 PM

Lifetime posts: 2,011

To Prepare For War, Is To Prepare for Peace

Post:

Whatevs. I hope im not on the range when Newby shows up with his ammo

By: SpecOpsUTAH 03-21-2015, 9:11 PM

Lifetime posts: 1,869

Les Baer .308 Semi-Auto Sniper with NightForce scope!!!

Post:

Ok back to the original question that started this thread: If you have experience we want you ideas loading .223 subsonic for SharpShooter’s suppressed Mini-14.

“My goal is to be able to take out lights at 200+ meters and the sound of the bulb breaking is louder than the sound coming from my Mini-14. It is suppressed (Indiana Arms #3001). I expect the shot will be too slow to advance the next round, so please only designs for subsonic. Thank you.”               -SharpShooter

By: VAgunsmith, MilitiaCentral Senior Moderator 03-21-2015, 9:16 PM

Lifetime posts: 2,012

To Prepare For War, Is To Prepare for Peace

A Verbatim Copy of a Comment Posted in Response to an Online Article on Misophonia, which Is, Also, an Example of How People Say Shit that Is Way Weirder than what Writers Believe We Can Get Away with Writing

"Im 22 and im an avid church goer/lover. Love the Christian faith
The sounds o hate are all subtle sounds that go into my left ear. ESPECIALLY when people speak in their heavenly language. 
Just this mornin, i hear my mommy speakin in her heavenly language andbit enrages me, i HATE IT so much. I also hate the P sound and the T/D sound when propped in my left. WEIRDLY- if theres a girl i like or sexually attracted to, the frustratiom turns to sexual arousal aka bein horny as frik! I go from 0-100 real quick
I dont get it at all. Obviously i like the latter but the first really bothers me. I get so angry, and comin from the military now, im really ready to murder whoever irritates my left ear but ive been dealing with it since i was younger
First time i realized i was angrh and jus cried was when my mommy grabbed me in church and was whispering but yelling at the time, so deeply in my ear
I was so mad, so enraged that all i could do was cry, she thought she had got her point across but man, it just started this crazy problem i cant control at all
I cant handle my own noises in my left ear too much, as it creates this irritating tickling in my ribs like im being tickled but im not. Really horrible. I use to experiment on myself and direct sound from my voice, soft whispering sound, to my left ear.
To no avail. Sigh but at least i kno wat its called now. And im glad im not alone"

JVL by Brad Slaugh

http://bradslaugh.com/home.html

ROUGH DRAFT My Nifty 3-Axis Model of Narrative Voice

Aware of the dangers of theory and schematic reduction, I have come up with a nifty way of mapping any character’s “voice” relative to three crossing axes. To rescue that from abstraction, let me explain:

Every person, including fiction characters, has a distinctive ‘voice’, or characteristic way of thinking, speaking, and writing. But it can be very difficult to point to or describe what sets that voice apart from others. Some characteristics are obvious, but others aren't. In Huckleberry Finn, Jim speaks with an accent, Mark Twain’s conception of the speech of an uneducated slave of that time. That much is obvious. But how do we know he is intelligent and perceptive if his diction is uniformly simple, his syntax is unsophisticated, and his manners always show deference to Huck, who we know to be in no way Jim’s superior? Jim’s qualities are deeply embedded in his voice, and his voice is made of particular ways with diction, syntax, and prosody.

In some cases, a single book contains an extreme range of voices. Moby-Dick probably best exemplifies this. Queequeg barely speaks English, really does little more than grunt, but his humanity and intelligence are never in question. Perhaps paradoxical is that Ahab speaks in great, hyper-articulate outpourings of the richest language, but his humanity, and certainly his judgment, are very much in question. Melville used a wide range of voices to illuminate character.

But what, exactly, are the variables in voice? I’ve mentioned diction and syntax, but these are linguistic categories, pretty abstract, and maybe not be helpful to writers. So I’ve come up with the following as a way of helping myself, as a writer, be clearer about how different characters’ voices differ.

Picture a graph with three axes.

The first axis represents a continuum of diction, defined by Greco-Latin on one end and Anglo-Saxon on the other. In English, we have use of an enormous range of words that we've adopted over the long, mongrel history of the language. Generally, our Anglo-Saxon words are short and concrete and, when we choose to use them, we convey a sense of uncomplicated empirical know-how and a tacit relationship to solid objects and discreet things. And our Greco-Latinate words are mostly polysyllabic and abstract, and convey a sense of a learned, theoretical, and often intellectual or spiritual approach to a topic. And we can mix these up, often to pungent or humorous effect. It feels unremarkable, at least among scholars of architecture, to say, for example: “The possibility of replacing the poetics with an architecture based solely on relations had a further result…” But replace the learned, Greek, abstract architecture with the blunt, solid, specific Anglo-Saxon hut, and you end up with a funny collision between the abstract and the concrete, or maybe between the high and the low. One doesn't normally speak of “a hut based solely on relations”, but to do so is squarely within the possibilities of English diction, and diction is a potent tool of writing. The writer’s use of diction in narrating a character is rich with possibility, and diction can reveal a wide range of character traits, from level of education to degree of humility and familiarity with things.

The second axis represents a continuum between hypotaxis and parataxis, which are learned Greek words that describe syntactic structures that, on the one hand, are full of subordinate clauses, which show the author’s explanation and interpretation of events; and, on the other hand, that are full of parallel constructions that tend to simply report on events without comment or causal explanation. Flaubert, Henry James, and Virginia Wolff mostly wrote hypotactic prose. For example, Henry James:

The ideally handsome way is for him to multiply in any given connexion all the possible sources of entertainment—or, more grossly expressing it again, to intensify his whole chance of pleasure. (It all comes back to that, to my and your “fun”—if we but allow the term its full extension; to the production of which no humblest question involved, even to that of the shade of a cadence or the position of a comma, is not richly pertinent.)

This extremely hypotactic prose is full of fine abstract distinctions, precise observations and categorizations, qualifications, and levels of subordinate structures that show a fastidious concern for conceptual precision and subtle social meaning.

But parataxis looks like this:

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.

Instead of James’ layers of subordinate clauses, Cormac McCarthy gives us series of phrases strung together by conjunctions, usually and. Not only is McCarthy uninterested in telling us what things mean, or how the characters experience them, or how they feel, but he is unwilling to even rank the characters’ observations according to any moral or aesthetic standard beyond good and bad. The characters, in The Road, live in a world that is no longer concerned with fine distinctions or with degrees of sophistication or with cultural categories. The world is a threat, and the characters scan it for danger and for food. The parataxis of this paragraph contains, in its form, the bleakness of reality, in which cultural categories of all kinds are suspect, and the best a character can do is rely on his unprejudiced observations to survive. The Road is not a Henry James drawing room.

In locating his prose, or his character’s speech along the axis of hypotaxis to parataxis, the writer is showing how much the character trusts the fine distinctions and categories of the culture. The hypotactic structure tends to show a certain comfort with the cultural categories and distinctions, and a certain confidence that these are for the best, and that they will support the good life. Hypotaxis tends to be the voice of the haves. Educated, flourishing, genteel, lucky people have been so supported by their education and by the sophisticated distinctions it provides, that they habitually turn to this prose of causality and explanation, with all its tidiness and propriety. Parataxis, though, shows a deep distrust of the world’s friendliness or meaning. It shows the world as a dangerous, inhospitable place that is beyond real comprehension, except in the most mechanical ways, and tends to put little trust in the subtle shadings of meaning that culture upholds. So, a character who speaks paratactically, as in McCarthy or Hemingway, for example, communicates a sense that his opinions and preferences are of little concern, because he has learned, through raw experience, that the world is hostile. And, of course, a writer can move along this continuum at will, depending on which character is speaking or what situation he finds himself in. Faulkner did this lots.

The third axis, the Z axis, is the continuum between plain, lucid language and denser, ranker, more poetic language. Simple, declamatory, unelaborated language tends to be associated with storytelling, or with a concern with plot, and is designed to not get in the way of the story. The author’s goal is to disappear, and to craft such frictionless prose that the reader hardly thinks about the language, per se, and is able to focus, without distraction, on the flow of events. Lucidity is the goal. Richard Lanham calls this “through” prose. It is like a window. The reader looks through it, and, if the writer has scrupulously cleaned the glass of his prose, the reader will not even notice that the glass is there. In some writing, however, the writer writes assertive prose that is a goal in its own right. Sometimes the plot becomes so secondary to the writing that it can be hard to follow. But, if done well, the writing can enrich and add meaning to the plot in ways that lucid prose never can. Rich, non-standard diction and syntax can be difficult, and the author can embed layer upon layer of intertextual meaning, allusions to other works that will inform the educated reader. Also, this kind of writing, which Richard Lanham calls “at” writing, because the reader looks at it, instead of through it, can have its own beauty and power outside the story. Faulkner, again, was one of the great writers of poetic prose. It can be hard going, but some of the most beautiful and rewarding prose in English is a result.

So, again, picture the three-axis graph. It looks like a cube. Any point inside that cube represents a certain character’s particular use of diction, parataxis or hypotaxis, and plainness or rankness of speech. Each of these continua locates the speaker in ways that reveal character. For example, when we read Virginia Wolff’s rendering of Mrs Dalloway’s speech, we hear a cultured but unfastidious diction; we hear an extremely hypotactic tendency to qualify, judge, requalify, equivocate, postulate, assert and retract, and sift observations for fine social significances; and we hear a generally plain language that becomes poetic and more difficult when the character experiences anxiety. Her class (upper), her education (Edwardian and feminine), and her state of mind (expectant, often flustered, preoccupied with social distinctions) and much more is revealed in the voice Wolff gave her. And, maybe an extreme example, when Faulkner writes Benjy Compson, we get a very limited, flat, concrete diction; we get a paratactic regularity and simplicity that is free of verbal judgment (but not at all free of feeling); and we get such plain language that it goes round the bend into a kind of opacity, a poetry of retardation.

So, I think this three-axis model, this cube, can be a useful device for being clear about how and why your character speaks. Any idiosyncrasy, and verbal eccentricity, occupies a position within the cube, albeit blurred and mobile. As a way of disciplining, or testing, the words of a character, you can locate that speech along each of these three axes. It can help point out inconsistencies and it can help guide decisions. Your ear, of course, is the best guide, but sometimes it’s helpful to step back and ask yourself Why did she suddenly use this highfalutin word? Why does he describe this landscape paratactically? And is there a narrative purpose to this use of poetic language, and is it justified? I like to have a schematic model to fall back on when I can’t trust my ear, or when I’m stumped.