“I sat in the chair and looked at the floor and prayed for Catherine.”
–From Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
The weakness of this sentence complicates Hemingway, with its hypotactic heart monitor beeping on the frantic “and.”
Adam Robinson is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems.
John Madera's fiction may be found in Conjunctions, Opium Magazine, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His criticism may be found in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.
After reading William Gass’s essay “And” on that almost invisible conjunction, I don’t think I can ever take it, or any other word, for that matter, for granted:
Definitely– also the great opening word of Pound’s _Cantos_:
“And then went down to the ship…”