Comments on: Awesome Paragraph: Ian Frazier on Siberia’s Lake Baikal

By: denniscass

denniscass — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:18:06 +0000

What’s wonderful about this graf is that there’s room for both Lars and Nancy to be right.

We end on land to bring us logically back to earth for the next graf.

But the poetry of that last line allows for sky and surf to co-mingle.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:51:29 +0000

huh. Maybe my mind works backwards (or perhaps I need remedial graf work….pretty sure that’s true) but I had a very different response to the last couple sentences, and the first sentence of the next paragraph.

What I responded to was an open and upward feel; the “winds” “optical,” “sensitive,” ” part of the sky,” left me swirling up in the air, and the next sentence (2nd graph), left me there: I imagined the waves rolling and breaking as a very celestial thing, like clouds or air swirling. It didn’t conjure, for me, the shoreline (not sure why).

I don’t know if this has anything to do with the fact that I have seen Baikal. But it is true that my lasting impression is that it spreads wide in a landscape of vast open sky, so maybe I brought a preconceived picture.

Dunno.

By: denniscass

denniscass — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:19:21 +0000

Lars is exactly right. Well done.

Some of you might be wondering if it matters that much. It matters that much.

As for grammar question, I don’t think you would have found it awkward in the context of the entire piece, which is in the past tense.

By: Lars

Lars — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:05:23 +0000

The second graf starts on the shoreline. Ending on “land” allows the mind’s eye to remain low and eases the transition to the next image, instead of yanking the reader back down from the sky.

By: Dennis Lang

Dennis Lang — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:31:12 +0000

Hi Cat–I’m far from a grammarian (is that even a word?) but interesting point above. It never occured to me, thinking that “I knew”–to have prior knowledge–that it “is” (presently) follows logically. Anyway no big deal. How come you found it awkward? Thanks.

By: Cat Moleski

Cat Moleski — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:52:11 +0000

I found the switch from past tense “I knew” to present tense “it’s the largest” in the first sentence awkward, but in the end it made me really want to see this lake, the whole point of travel writing.