Lafferty’s short sentences fascinate me. For several weeks, I've tried to understand how they work, especially those sentences that carry significant thematic weight. There is a smart essay online that argues Lafferty breaks the rules by telling instead of showing. But this is only half right. Lafferty shows by telling: he uses what Virginia Tufte, in Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, calls “syntactic symbolism.”
Tufte writes, "Prose is linear. It is read and said to move… the movement may resemble accumulation or attrition, progress or other process, even stasis, or any of these interrupted, turned, reversed. In space or time or both, it can go in any direction as continuous or repetitive, accelerated or retarded, smooth, halting, or halted. The variety is enormous . . . Here syntax as style has moved beyond the arbitrary, the sufficient, and is made so appropriate to content that, sharing the very qualities of the content, it is carried to that point where it seems not only right but inevitable."
One of Lafferty’s signature moves as a writer is to build short sentences using expressive fragmentation. To note this when reading, I use a virgule (/) to mark the fractures. When the entire sentence stands alone, two virgules flank the sentence. To show what I mean, I’ve labeled each fragment below (F#) where I would place the virgule, along with short explanations of why I'd place it there. The next step would be to spell out the connection between the syntactic symbolism with the specifics of sentence grammar. The sentences are from "Days of Grass, Days of Straw."
//Gray day / broken and bleeding red.//
[Noun phrase modified by participial adjectives]
F1: Gray day—simple noun phrase establishing mundane scene.
F2: broken and bleeding red—violent imagery abruptly juxtaposed, instantly subverting normalcy.
//Christopher Foxx was walking down a city street. / No, it was a city road. / It was really a city trail or path.//
[Series of corrected declarative sentences]
F1: city street—initial, conventional description.
F2: city road—corrective narrowing.
F3: city trail or path—further narrowing; mirrors mental uncertainty.
//Oh, / oh, / what else?//
[Interjections followed by interrogative fragment]
F1: Oh,—hesitation interjection.
F2: oh,—deepening uncertainty.
F3: what else?—anxious fragment signaling incomplete memory.
//A strange coin.//
[Noun phrase fragment]
Single fragment emphasizes surprise and strangeness.
//Things hardly remembered: / echoes and shadows, / or were they the strong sounds and things themselves?//
[Fragment followed by interrogative compound sentence]
F1: Things hardly remembered:—introduces ambiguity.
F2: echoes and shadows—metaphorical fragment; uncertain memories.
F3: or were they the strong sounds and things themselves?—corrective fragment deepening uncertainty.
//Wait, / your change.//
[Imperative followed by noun phrase fragment]
F1: Wait,—sharp imperative fragment creating abruptness
.F2: your change.—explanatory fragment sharply juxtaposed.
//Ah, / they'd curl and bend, / but they wouldn't break.//
[Exclamation with compound declarative sentence]
F1: Ah,—fragmentary exclamation.
F2: they'd curl and bend,—partial impression.
F3: but they wouldn't break.—antithetical completion, draws attention.
//No two alike, / really, / no two alike.//
[Repeated elliptical sentence fragments]
Symmetrical fragments expressing the uncanny, with virgules before and after "really."
//But is it wrong to feel unsatisfied, / which is unsated?//
[Interrogative complex sentence with relative clause]
F1: But is it wrong to feel unsatisfied,—poses moral ambiguity.
F2: which is unsated?—deepens conceptual uncertainty.
//Something was mighty odd here.//
[Declarative sentence with predicate adjective]
Single fragment succinctly captures intuition of abnormality.
//Something was mighty even here, / mighty neat.//
[Declarative with repetition and predicate adjectives]
F1: Something was mighty even here,—unexpected smoothness. Punning.
F2: mighty neat.—expresses artificiality abruptly.
//Straw-Men! / Straw-Men!//
[Repeated exclamatory noun fragments]
Repeated exclamations rupturing narrative normality.
//Christopher Foxx said softly, 'I remember the word now / and I couldn't remember it before.'//
[Declarative embedding compound declarative clauses]
F1: I remember the word now—recovered memory fragment.
F2: and I couldn't remember it before.—loss fragment juxtaposed.
//Drool and be happy.//
[Compound imperative sentence]
Humorously abrupt imperative; satirizes passive consumerism.
//Dragons' sauce, / said the waiter.//
[Noun fragment with dialogue attribution]
F1: Dragons' sauce,—surreal culinary imagery.
F2: said the waiter.—mundane juxtaposition.
//Days out of the Count.//
[Capitalized elliptical noun fragment]
Isolated symbolic expression of temporal fragmentation.
//Make room for me! / Oh, / make room for me!//
[Repeated imperative sentences with interjection]
Emotionally charged imperative mirroring narrative fragmentation.
//The head, / the head! / Don't let them forget the head!//
[Repeated noun fragment with imperative]
Urgency dramatically emphasized through repetition.
//He was revealed as a straw-man / filled with bloody straw, / and no more.//
[Passive declarative with participial phrase]
Identity dissolution intensified by sharp fragment.
//It smashed itself / like a bursting pumpkin / on the broken floor.//
[Declarative sentence with simile]
Violent concrete imagery heightened by fragmented syntax.
Some conclusions:
These breaks are never random; they enact syntactic symbolism.
They function as sentence-level controls on narrative pacing and reader focus.
They symbolically mirror thematic elements such as psychological disorientation, identity dissolution, temporal instability, and procedural uncertainty.
They serve as isolating maneuvers that Lafferty uses to build linguistically charged moments of intense concentration.
They employ juxtaposed fragments to achieve paradoxical, poetic, and philosophical intensity.
Without this expressive fragmentation and syntactic symbolism, Lafferty would have to rely far more heavily on conventional methods of “showing” rather than “telling.” In his hands, the precise sentence fractures show more vividly and economically than most traditional forms of telling can.
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