Complex Numbers

(As an Aside...)

I probably overuse parentheses (but I don't care).

    These are the 5 (er, 10?) best parentheses in literature.  

"Best" in this case (and so many others) is entirely subjective, but okay.

I love a good aside. I live for literary intrusion. I want comments on my comments, discursive thinking, footnotes.

Footnotes can be a massive pain in the ass, especially in traditionally printed works without benefit of hyperlinks.

What I’m saying is this: I can’t get enough parentheticals. So on the watery occasion of it being parenthesis-master Vladimir Nabokov’s birthday (April 22), I have collected few of my favorites...

Like many articles I feature, this one's a bit old, over two years. But it's unlikely any truly great parentheticals have been introduced since then (especially here in my blog).

Vladimir Nabokov

We know this guy was a great writer, at least by lit-fic genre standards, but the article author's explanation of why the particular excerpt achieved greatness is (in my opinion) worth reading.

Virginia Woolf

No.

Elisabeth Bishop

Who?

...seriously, though, another good analysis, which I think would be more clear to me had I read the entire poem (which I haven't, and won't).

Jamaica Kincaid

To be honest with you, I could have chosen almost any sentence from A Small Place for this list. The book positively bristles with parentheses; Kincaid uses them to explain, to criticize, to condescend, to name, to emphasize, to speak the unspoken, to distance herself and at the same time, to implicate herself—reflecting her dual relationship to Antigua (both native and non-resident) and to the text.

Well, that's a ringing endorsement for not reading Kincaid. Just because I overuse parentheses doesn't mean I tolerate it when other writers do. I also have a problem with repeating words too often, and it grates on my very last nerve when other writers do that, too.

e.e. cummings

ah,yes—the verysoul of pretentiousness

Okay, yes, I'm biased; I'd rather slog through 10 bad science fiction books than one snobby lit-fic tome. But I think I get what the article is saying about parentheses, and I think we can all benefit from (at the very least) reading this article.