http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/0857-nov96/EJ0857Bundrens.pd
Bundrens, Faulkner, and Grammar
Stephen B. Heller
When English Journal asks for the current scoop on teaching grammar,
who better to deliver an in-the-
trenches message than the very best
purveyors of grammatical perjury:
the cast of erudite erstwhiles from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.
Anse
Goddamned these teeth. As if my new Missus Bundren had anything to do with it. Them ten dollars were rightfully mine, and the hell with Dewey Dell, ’swhat I say ’bout it. If she spent her time out in school ‘stead of pickin’ that cotton with them there Lafe, why I’m quite sure she wouldn’t have ended up in the family way.
Now that I have me a new missus, I plan on giving that girl a right proper education. She’s goin’ to school and learn her some grammar. Writin’ that note to that tomfoolery of a boyfriend. Just what the hell was she hopin’ for? Was there ever a man so defiled? So vilified as me, poor Anse Bundren whose only purpose has been to provide for my family?
See here—I got me the note she wrote right up next to the denture containers. Now just one minute—
I ain’t had it. It’s the female trouble.
Well, hell! No wonder her dumb boyfriend didn’t marry her. She’s got the same word for the direct object and pronoun. What sonofabitch-of-a-boyfriend is goin’ to know how to read this? She needs herself a conjunctive adverb to show cause and effect. See here—
I ain’t had it; consequently, it’s the female trouble.
Either Miss Dewey Dell learns herself some kind of complex sentence writing skills, or she’ll be right sorry for fallacious reasoning. Just how are we supposed to know the “it” of her statement? And this goddamned deconstruction approach can just about wipe my toolbox, so far as I’m concerned. How
When English Journal asks for the current scoop on teaching grammar,
who better to deliver an in-the-
trenches message than the very best
purveyors of grammatical perjury:
the cast of erudite erstwhiles from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.Anse
Goddamned these teeth. As if my new Missus Bundren had anything to do with it. Them ten dollars were rightfully mine, and the hell with Dewey Dell, ’swhat I say ’bout it. If she spent her time out in school ‘stead of pickin’ that cotton with them there Lafe, why I’m quite sure she wouldn’t have ended up in the family way.
Now that I have me a new missus, I plan on giving that girl a right proper education. She’s goin’ to school and learn her some grammar. Writin’ that note to that tomfoolery of a boyfriend. Just what the hell was she hopin’ for? Was there ever a man so defiled? So vilified as me, poor Anse Bundren whose only purpose has been to provide for my family?
See here—I got me the note she wrote right up next to the denture containers. Now just one minute—
I ain’t had it. It’s the female trouble.
Well, hell! No wonder her dumb boyfriend didn’t marry her. She’s got the same word for the direct object and pronoun. What sonofabitch-of-a-boyfriend is goin’ to know how to read this? She needs herself a conjunctive adverb to show cause and effect. See here—
I ain’t had it; consequently, it’s the female trouble.
Either Miss Dewey Dell learns herself some kind of complex sentence writing skills, or she’ll be right sorry for fallacious reasoning. Just how are we supposed to know the “it” of her statement? And this goddamned deconstruction approach can just about wipe my toolbox, so far as I’m concerned. How
am I supposed to equate the vernacular
with the universal?
Mind you, I’m a-goin’ to charge Dewey Dell for the time it takes me to send her off to school, and I’m thinkin’ about a percentage of her future earnings for my early retirement.
Was there ever a man so trod upon?
Cash
The rules of grammar:
1. A direct object is like a coffin: it’s the one that signs on the dotted line.
2. A pronoun and a coffin are the same thing. They both take the place of the person you love most.
3. The best spell-check program out there today is called Adze.
4. The best way to remember subject- verb agreement is to remember that the natural balance of a dead body oc- curs somewhere between the head and feet, and probably closer to the head.
5. The perfectability of the human shape, as seen in grammar and a coffin.
6. Keeping your tools.
7. A thesaurus shouldn’t get lost in the water.
8. Breaking your legs.
9. Is no worse than an incomplete sentence.
10. Dialect does not determine the system. We all follow the same manual.
Vardaman
My mother is a sentence diagrammer. The sentence diagrammer is my mother. Does that make my mother a linking verb?
Darl
When my parents conceived me back then is was will be I couldn’t help but consider that there was a logic to the universe and to their future game plan, despite the fact that Addie and Anse had but a handful of positive reflections between them, and despite the real life truth that I was not nor ever could be destined to think in a manner of logic that our universe had beckoned us to. Indeed if I could, could I not have gotten Addie a cab?
Mind you, I’m a-goin’ to charge Dewey Dell for the time it takes me to send her off to school, and I’m thinkin’ about a percentage of her future earnings for my early retirement.
Was there ever a man so trod upon?
Cash
The rules of grammar:
1. A direct object is like a coffin: it’s the one that signs on the dotted line.
2. A pronoun and a coffin are the same thing. They both take the place of the person you love most.
3. The best spell-check program out there today is called Adze.
4. The best way to remember subject- verb agreement is to remember that the natural balance of a dead body oc- curs somewhere between the head and feet, and probably closer to the head.
5. The perfectability of the human shape, as seen in grammar and a coffin.
6. Keeping your tools.
7. A thesaurus shouldn’t get lost in the water.
8. Breaking your legs.
9. Is no worse than an incomplete sentence.
10. Dialect does not determine the system. We all follow the same manual.
Vardaman
My mother is a sentence diagrammer. The sentence diagrammer is my mother. Does that make my mother a linking verb?
Darl
When my parents conceived me back then is was will be I couldn’t help but consider that there was a logic to the universe and to their future game plan, despite the fact that Addie and Anse had but a handful of positive reflections between them, and despite the real life truth that I was not nor ever could be destined to think in a manner of logic that our universe had beckoned us to. Indeed if I could, could I not have gotten Addie a cab?
Crawling through the overblown river
reminded me of that continual stream of
sentences that my teachers failed to correct
me of, even though they had no idea that
the society brutally, infallibly and unmercifully labeled me as unfit for their demands,
which was fine so long as we could make it
across the goddamned river Jewel knew that
the purchase of his horse, in the scheme of
things, was only a simple sentence, compared to the compound structure of taking a
train to the insane asylum.
But who were are is will be they to judge insanity, for wasn’t it I who dove into the water to retrieve the full-of-holes-coffin that poor Mama had found herself in, as if that accident by the water were a semicolon in her journey towards Jefferson. But my teachers failed to correct me of my habits, and I knew that when I saw Dewey Dell and Lafe by the cotton fields that I never would be able to punctuate again, and it was for this reason that I had to set the barn on fire. How else would the buzzards leave?
Jewel
“Goddamned sonofabitch!” I said to my father, failing to acknowledge the birthright any more than the capitalization of his name. For he had given me his legacy without me deserving it. He had abandoned my mother and sired me by a preacher. The Reverend Whitfield gave new meaning to parallel construction, I reckon.
The horse was my thing. It was my personal pronoun, reflexive verb, and present day gerund living, riding, caressing, holding, owning that horse. And just where did Anse Bundren get it into his comma spliced head to sell off my horse? That horse that I had diagrammed corn stalks for at all hours. And him not even being the man to pass on my birthright. That horse that wouldn’t let the cart get ahead of it across the overflowing river to Jefferson.
But it was the fire. “You Darl!” I shouted not caring a whit for punctuation What gives you the right to set fire to that barn? For Darl’s memory had existed in the pluperfect as much as the future perfect, and Addie’s death did more to disturb that poor run-on boy’s verb tense as much as it did his ability to spell-check. For Darl is was were will be has been never forgiving of the buzzards direct object flying over our reeking mother prep phrase.
But who were are is will be they to judge insanity, for wasn’t it I who dove into the water to retrieve the full-of-holes-coffin that poor Mama had found herself in, as if that accident by the water were a semicolon in her journey towards Jefferson. But my teachers failed to correct me of my habits, and I knew that when I saw Dewey Dell and Lafe by the cotton fields that I never would be able to punctuate again, and it was for this reason that I had to set the barn on fire. How else would the buzzards leave?
Jewel
“Goddamned sonofabitch!” I said to my father, failing to acknowledge the birthright any more than the capitalization of his name. For he had given me his legacy without me deserving it. He had abandoned my mother and sired me by a preacher. The Reverend Whitfield gave new meaning to parallel construction, I reckon.
The horse was my thing. It was my personal pronoun, reflexive verb, and present day gerund living, riding, caressing, holding, owning that horse. And just where did Anse Bundren get it into his comma spliced head to sell off my horse? That horse that I had diagrammed corn stalks for at all hours. And him not even being the man to pass on my birthright. That horse that wouldn’t let the cart get ahead of it across the overflowing river to Jefferson.
But it was the fire. “You Darl!” I shouted not caring a whit for punctuation What gives you the right to set fire to that barn? For Darl’s memory had existed in the pluperfect as much as the future perfect, and Addie’s death did more to disturb that poor run-on boy’s verb tense as much as it did his ability to spell-check. For Darl is was were will be has been never forgiving of the buzzards direct object flying over our reeking mother prep phrase.
Addie
Everyone knows the real reason I plotted against Anse was his inability to diagram sentences. As evidence of my guile, my subterfuge, and my steadfast belief that I, Addie Bundren, had been victimized by the male and hierarchical incestuaries of Yoknapatawpha County—I led them to believe that I was strictly unhappy in marriage, and that this desolation ultimately led to my own willingness to greet my Creator, both under the sheets, behind Anse’s back, and above the clouds—please pardon the use of three prepositional phrases at once.
However, if the truth be known (and I won’t begin a sentence with a conjunctive adverb again), it was my statement, my per- sonal and political message to Anse and his male horde of incomplete sentences. It was my statement against an English language infested by the same bigoted and frustrated male libido that rendered me and all my womenfolk second. Never mind that I could diagram sentences better than any other person for miles on end. Never mind that my son Cash’s grammatical equations to carpentry were as unexciting as beginning every sentence with an article.
Don’t you dare believe a word of Anse Bundren. Him and his kind had converted, had used, had manipulated the tools and science of English grammar as a means of sab- otage against us all.
So it was my guile and deceit and ultimately my legacy that abdicated grammar and my legacy. I gave him a run-on in Darl. I gave him a fragment in Cash. Dewey Dell was the use of passive voice. Vardaman was a misspelling. And my favorite? Jewel. For Jewel was not Anse’s but God’s, and he He he He he He he was my redeemer, my savior, my one who saw that deconstruction of the vernacular could not nor would not violate the sanctity of the language, so long as it was used in fairness.
Anse
Goddamnit! Just how do you spell that word?
Stephen B. Heller teaches at Oak Lawn Community High School in Illinois. His writing has appeared in the Illinois English Bulletin and National Lampoon Magazine.
Everyone knows the real reason I plotted against Anse was his inability to diagram sentences. As evidence of my guile, my subterfuge, and my steadfast belief that I, Addie Bundren, had been victimized by the male and hierarchical incestuaries of Yoknapatawpha County—I led them to believe that I was strictly unhappy in marriage, and that this desolation ultimately led to my own willingness to greet my Creator, both under the sheets, behind Anse’s back, and above the clouds—please pardon the use of three prepositional phrases at once.
However, if the truth be known (and I won’t begin a sentence with a conjunctive adverb again), it was my statement, my per- sonal and political message to Anse and his male horde of incomplete sentences. It was my statement against an English language infested by the same bigoted and frustrated male libido that rendered me and all my womenfolk second. Never mind that I could diagram sentences better than any other person for miles on end. Never mind that my son Cash’s grammatical equations to carpentry were as unexciting as beginning every sentence with an article.
Don’t you dare believe a word of Anse Bundren. Him and his kind had converted, had used, had manipulated the tools and science of English grammar as a means of sab- otage against us all.
So it was my guile and deceit and ultimately my legacy that abdicated grammar and my legacy. I gave him a run-on in Darl. I gave him a fragment in Cash. Dewey Dell was the use of passive voice. Vardaman was a misspelling. And my favorite? Jewel. For Jewel was not Anse’s but God’s, and he He he He he He he was my redeemer, my savior, my one who saw that deconstruction of the vernacular could not nor would not violate the sanctity of the language, so long as it was used in fairness.
Anse
Goddamnit! Just how do you spell that word?
Stephen B. Heller teaches at Oak Lawn Community High School in Illinois. His writing has appeared in the Illinois English Bulletin and National Lampoon Magazine.
76
November 1996
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