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Guest Post, by Ari Juels: A Sentence About a Sentence I Love

The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him before Henry Jekyll with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God.

–From Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

One of my favorite prose special effects: By sheer magic of word order—the spectral “him” pointing now at Hyde, now at Jekyll—the “before” that freezes time as we’re swept from Hell to Heaven—Stevenson creates an illusion more vivid than vision.

Ari Juels is the author of the computer security thriller Tetraktys.

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