More from @BCDreyer

Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

21 Dec

I had somehow never noticed before that Shirley Jackson uses semicolons in dialogue; she gets away with it.

[I still don't recommend their use in dialogue.]

When I was (carefully) copyediting the volume of SJ's work we published as Let Me Tell You, I recall encountering two extremely lengthy multiclause sentences held together by a single semicolon, and to be honest my response was:

Madam, this is why we have periods.

Read 4 tweets

Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

21 Dec

Five people DM'd me overnight to ask whether the third sentence of the third paragraph of That Story is grammatically faulty.

It most certainly is.

*She fell in love with a defendant whose case she not only covered but of whose arrest she also broke the news, of.

*Not only did she fall in love with a defendant whose case she was covering, but when they got around to arresting him, there she was, breaking the news therof.

Read 5 tweets

Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

20 Dec

Happy Irene Dunne's birthday!

Say, wait a minute, don't anybody leave this room, I've lost my purse!

Pensive Irene Dunne's birthday!

Read 8 tweets

Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

19 Dec

Noting that The Haunting of Hill House is fully 50 percent over, almost to the page, before SJ finally comes after you hammer and tongs.

Good Lord, I just realized who (with all respect to Robert Wise and the watchful ghost of Val Lewton) should have filmed The Haunting of Hill House:

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Either he films it in English, or Claire and Julie learn their roles in French (which I imagine they could have managed), or: THEY'RE STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.

Read 4 tweets