In his book, The Christmas Plains, Joseph Bottum writes about a myriad of Christmas experiences, taking us to South Dakota, Washington DC, and back to the Black Hills. Despite the many different settings and experiences Bottom writes about, he constructs his sentences in such a way that makes it easy – and a pleasure – to follow along.
Near the beginning of the book, Bottom describes a memory of when he was a young boy reading by a radiator on a winter’s day. “What I remember is lying on the living room floor alongside the burbling radiator, propped up on my elbows and a cushion filched from the sofa, to read Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals while the sweat dripped inside my shirt and the wind whistled up through the gap around the radiator pipe to chill my hands.” (p18) The crisp adjectives, “lying,” “burbling,” “dripping,” and “whistling” add texture and imagery so that we might be “propped up on [our] elbows” reading by a radiator, too. How much more rewarding to read a sentence where we can hear for ourselves a burbling radiator and the wind whistling, than one that reads, “I was cold so I sat down by the heater.” We might not have had this experience, but Bottum describes the memory in such a way that it is easy to place ourselves in the scene.
Another example where Bottom uses his sentences to carry us along with him is on page 91 where he writes of hearing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” on a walk home. “Yet in thy dark streets shineth/The everlasting Light from ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem,’ the carolers sang another year on the steps of a nursing home as I walked by, and it rose, and it rose, and it rose like a torrent. And down in the flood, I was washed away.”
The words “another year” add a metaphorical eye roll to this sentence. Bottom could’ve just written, “the carolers sang on the steps,” but the insertion of “another year” adds tension to the scene: here is a narrator who once again recognizes a carol and the same scene in his community. What is different?
And yet, as he walks by, something changes: “…and it rose, and it rose, and it rose like a torrent.” Here, “rose” occurs three times in this sentence to create an emotional surge, so we might be swept up in this fast moving stream of everlasting light. Bottom uses repetition twice in this sentence, incorporating the word “and” four times. The continued use of “and” and rose” give almost a tangible feel of a huge wave approaching. With each “and” we are rising higher on this wave. The construction of this sentence helps us see and feel a familiar carol differently.
Throughout his book Joseph Bottom writes of anecdotes that explore Christmas: be it the stories in the Bible, meals remembered with family, Charles Dickens finishing A Christmas Carol and celebrating into the night, or even breaking yet another glass Christmas ornament. All these moments, Bottom says, point to something.
“The rush of days, the piles of presents, the trees and the good and the ornaments and the carols and the tinsel and the plastic bunches of fake mistletoe and all the rest-these are not distraction but testimonies to the thing.” (p200) In the first half of this sentence, Bottom creates the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season by not just adding more nouns but by repeating, “and the” almost six times. It is difficult to read this first part and not feel breathless. And when we’re breathless, we need to rest. Rest is exactly what Bottom provides when he inserts the dash in this sentence. However, it isn’t just rest he provides, but meaning too. He explains why we are breathless, and in the following three sentences he offers our participation to look at these things differently: “If you step back, just a little, you can see them for what they are. They join, in the mad dance of the season, to make a pattern. They orient themselves to the giant compass needle that could lead us to the truth.” (200) These sentences are shorter, but they read slower, allowing, us, if we want, a chance to think about our own Christmas memories, and what they point to.
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