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Guest Post, by Jen Michalski: A Sentence About a Sentence I Love

“Later in the afternoon, with sad resignation, the county fair bares its breasts.”

–“Emergency,” Denis Johnson, from Jesus’ Son
I’m a big believer that writers should use their own personal vocabulary (thanks, Michael Kimball) to show the reader how they uniquely perceive the world, and I can think of no better sentence that exemplifies that belief than this one–no one else could have written it but Johnson.

Jen Michalski is the author of Close Encounters.

5 thoughts on “Guest Post, by Jen Michalski: A Sentence About a Sentence I Love

  1. Oh, lovely. I read that book like four times in a row and then again a few years after….but it’s been a long time. Just lovely.

  2. Man, yes.

    Though, I have to admit, my favorite sentence from Emergency is the one where the narrator wakes up in the truck, and understands how a drowning man might suddenly feel a great thirst being quenched.

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