Suppose a Sentence

A captivating meditation on the power of the sentence by the author of Essayism, a 2018 New Yorker book of the year.

In Suppose a Sentence, Brian Dillon, whom John Banville has called a literary flaneur in the tradition of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, has written a sequel of sorts to Essayism, turning his attention to the oblique and complex pleasures of the sentence. A series of essays prompted by a single sentence-from Shakespeare to James Baldwin, John Ruskin to Joan Didion-this new book explores style, voice, and language, along with the subjectivity of reading. Both an exercise in practical criticism and a set of experiments or challenges, Suppose a Sentence is a polemical and personal reflection on the art of the sentence in literature.